DEALING WITH THE INCREASING NUMBER OF DEATHS AS WE AGE:

How I coped with losing so many I’ve loved

We don’t receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us. -Marcel Proust

When I picked up the envelope and saw the return address of Louisville, KY, I knew who sent it, and I smiled as I pulled out the card. I suddenly stopped smiling when I read the first line: “With much sorrow I have to tell you that Dave passed away.” I should be used to such announcements, but each time this subject reappears, I still suffer a shock wave followed by sadness followed by the unravelling of memories with their scattered threads moving haphazardly with starts and stops through days, weeks and months of our past, always followed by the difficult reality  “Dave is dead.”

Since Dave no longer “is,” I now make the grievous change to past tense when discussing him. He was an engineer, with a wife and three children. In 1975 Dave and his wife had moved from Columbus into their newly built house next to our newly built house in a new neighborhood. Even though I was a young professional woman who taught English and speech communication, Dave never blinked when I told him that I enjoyed using power tools. When he discovered that I was looking for a used workbench for the unfinished basement, he suggested that we build one together. Dave even provided the 2x4s and delivered them to the basement. I smile when I write this memory, and then in a flash I am shrouded by the present sadness: Dave is dead.

During this period when Dave and his family lived next door, my greatest friend and positive influence happened to be a paraplegic. Barbara and I taught at the University of Cincinnati, sharing an office for 39 years. Barbara’s house was conducive to her life in a wheelchair: ranch-style for single floor living, three-foot wide doorways, wood floors, and an extra wide hallway leading to the bedrooms and office. Though Dave and his family lived in a traditional two-story house, we often spent time with them at their home. Dave always managed the front of the wheelchair, and I held the handlebars after I turned the chair around tilting it and pulling it backwards as Dave and I rolled Barbara up the steps to reach the front porch and then over the front-door threshold to enter the house. When I thought about this happy time, Dave and his family were alive, Barbara and her parents were alive, and my parents were alive. Life was good.

Then life changed. Barbara’s parents died. My parents died. Barbara died. Dave died. And others died. The question always becomes, Is the gain of memories with the living worth enduring the loss when they die?

Nobody needs help learning to deal with good times. When times were good and birthdays and holidays celebrated, I never consciously thought that these would be memories I was collecting for the period when they would be gone. When loved ones first began dying, I was not prepared for major loss; even now my mind spends special-occasion days morphing into memories shared with no one. Our memories are shared only if someone experienced the incident with another, and once all are dead who shared that special time, there is only one who remains.  Are the leftover memories worth the pain of loss? Two opposing facts: (1) I would not suffer this pain if I had never known these people (2) If I never had met these people, I would not have the memories.

How would I ever understand loss until I suffered it? How can I empathize with others until I know first-hand what they suffer? Help groups, after all, are based on having others who understand a difficult situation. Alcoholics intimately grasp the situation of fellow alcoholics, as do those with drug addiction, those with a disease, those who have lost a child—those who have the same difficulty others have also experienced. Someone once told me that the longest ride in the world is the ride behind the hearse. I have taken that longest ride several times now. It is true that if I had not known all these people, I would not have the pain, but I would also be deprived of the memories.

Of course deaths cause us to feel at a loss, to feel a yearning that cannot be satisfied, to become angry and depressed. But what it also offers is awareness of the value of life, of the joy of relationships, and of the value of memories. Memories help sustain me. The important people in my life who are dead are still teaching me, instructing me, and influencing me. The past relationships helped make me who I am now, and so I am grateful the memories stabilize me.

Death creates awareness of the shortness of life, of the value of relationships, of the creation of memories, and of the impact of emotional pain. Admittedly death seems to be a negative guarantee of life. Yet if I have no memories, what do I have left, except for a life without the influence of people I respect, admire, and love — a life without the people who helped create who I became. As a result of this realization, I have chosen to continue creating more memories with the people still alive whom I love and who love me; whether or not they die before or after me becomes irrelevant. John Patrick, in his 1957 play “The Teahouse of the August Moon” wrote, “Pain makes man think. Thought makes man wise. Wisdom makes life endurable.”

With a loved one’s death, if we learn to endure what seems for a time unendurable, we can grow wiser. Harsh realities, even though sad, need not be all bad. We choose how we deal with the facts of life and of death. These instances can allow us to feel, to understand, and to have compassion. We can reach out to others who suffer loss. In terms of death, we can lovingly sit beside someone who is watching a loved one die, and someday we will sit beside our own loved one who is dying. When someone else sits with us during this difficult time, we will fully grasp the value of compassion. Throughout life and death, difficulties increase awareness and allow us the opportunity to increase wisdom.

Unsplash by Rhodi Alers de Lopez

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