Sunday, March 25, 2018

Hostile Death

I have noticed that a lot of people are hostile about death. Maybe their death, or their friends impending death, or an adult child's death. Lately death has been hard at work taking away many people we know via cancer. People my age and people in their 80's. Death comes swift for some and slowly and painfully for others. Funerals come and go, far flung family arrives, emotions are allover the place. Sometimes you are asked who you are and what are you doing here by a relative. I say, I was here when your loved one was dying. He or she asked for XYZ and I got it done. You are now here and you can carry on with your grief. I am only a friend who was there at the end. Some endings have been salvation, other endings painful questions. But the worst are the accusations from other friends about my choice to overstep their feelings and get the job done. Be it prayers, getting a priest, grocery, farm work, blanket making I get the job done. My friend is dead and I have to live with that person no longer in my life. But you do not know that as you do not know me. Your mom or dad or grandparent or uncle or aunt was my friend and they died. And I hope when I die they are waiting for me on the other side of life with the big man upstairs. I guess I am a fixer. I get the job done. Sometimes I find what was lost, a person, an object, a place, a song or a photo. I bring a moment of peace of mind to that person I got to know while here on this earth. But I am happy in my work as I work around death in all his forms. I can see when he is near and I let him do his job. But I am not hostile to it for I know one day he will come for me.

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