Tag Archives: death

Death and saying goodbye in extended families

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There was a death in my extended family. This one a thousand miles away. He lived a long life, and had just about anything any man could want in his life. It was his time to pass on and he did. There is not a lot else to say about him.

There is an understanding with them, and those in his position, or at least it seems. We both know that this time when we see each other may be the last. When we last said goodbye we both knew it would likely be the last time we may ever speak, hug, or shake hands. In situations like this when we live so far apart, usually on the last hours of visiting, there comes a unspoken acknowledgment that  the next time I see one of them it may as they lay in their coffin.

I don’t know if these last hours of every visit become more real, take on more meaning or just happen on a more mature level. Maybe it is all these things happening together. If anything is between us or there is anything that needs to be said, it has to be said in those last few hours. After that, as is the situation now, anything being said is a one way conversation.

My end of the conversation has always been quite open. In any conversation there are always levels of closeness that we can approach. Usually in those last time I may see you conversations, we end up trading feelings over our lives and about each other. Perhaps the conversation is a little stylized, or formal, but it seems everything that can be said, is said.

I do not know how I will be when I am one the one who will be leaving first, but the generation of those going now in my family are tough people. They had a hard childhood, and they had a hard life, even when life was easy, it is hard for them. They did not have a lot of the support systems we enjoy. They are not comfortable with their feelings, much of the time unless those feelings are in the realm of anger. Anger was always the easiest feeling for them to express. I think if someone was not initiated into their world, would not know, that many times anger is their highest expression of love for one another. It was all they have, or all they can comfortably express.

Conversations are usually pretty straight forward. They will say something to make me know they may never see me again. I say something acknowledging that I too know I may never see them again alive. Then they something about something in their life, and how I must have felt about it. That is the catch in the conversation. It puts both our feelings at a time and place of something that happened probably years earlier. My answer for whatever they have brought up as an example, is my expression of how I really feel about them, their life, and I how I feel about how they lived their life.

This repeats usually two or three times, each time a different event of the time we spent a part of our lives together. I get to live in their life for those seconds, and they are giving me an opportunity to let hem know how I really feel about how they lived their life. Usually they soften up for a few minutes, and remind me of special times they remember about me, which is their way of letting me know how they really feel, as if I didn’t know already.

That is usually all there is, as there is not much more to be said. Everything is right between us, and we both know that if we never see each other again, that it is okay. We each have said our piece. I bring my bags out to the car, say my final goodbyes, hug them goodbye, and head down the street.

Usually up until now I see them again. But as in all things, that time passes, and these days it seems saying goodbye is really saying goodbye.

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Introspection in a cold breeze

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The gates of introspection were thrown open late the other night. It was a mistake, I was not thinking, but they opened all the same. The only public item that washed up was the death of my Mother. She died a few years ago, three days before Christmas.

I took off a month of work, left my family alone, travelled across country, and stayed at her home with her in October/November. I was there twenty four hours a day seven days a week. Or most of it any way. She had told me back in July, that as the time got closer, and it looked like she did not know what she was doing, she did know what she was doing, and it was okay.

Okay, I could understand that. My father in the weeks before he went, did everything he could (or so it seemed) to help me hate him. So my Mother saying this was not something that shocked me. When I was with my Mom, after about a week, I needed a few hours to myself, time away from reality. I asked my Mom if she was okay with me leaving the house for an evening, and she said yes, she would be okay.

It was close to freezing when I left. Less than two hours later I received a phone call from a neighbor that my Mom was outside laying on the ground. They called the ambulance, I raced to the hospital. About ten days later, there was a repeat, this time she was in the back yard, the weather was still freezing. Repeat the story, a few days in the hospital, and home she came. Some days I thought she was really there, and other days I was not sure who was home, if anybody.

One afternoon she wanted to go for a ride. I helped her in the car, started driving, and she started singing. Not a song from her childhood, or a song from the romantic days of her life, but another song. This song had one line, and the same rhythm. For over two hours I drove my Mom around listening to her one line song. I want to mention first that I rarely heard my Mom use any off color language in her life. On this day for over two hours, I listened to her sing, “Thanks for being a prick.” Over and over again. The fact that she was constantly grabbing at the steering wheel trying to turn the car into the ditch was minor compared to the song. She didn’t want to go home, fwiw, so we rode around the countryside, her singing her song, and grabbing at the steering wheel now and again.

A few days later she seemed to want to talk about her life. I asked her something about my Dad. “I don’t know why I married that son-of-a-bitch”, was the only thing she had to say about him. She told me some things about a Great Aunt I never knew I had. She talked a little bit about her Dad, Sisters, and Brothers, and that was about it. End of the end of my life conversation.

Because of all the problems with her body dying, it was impossible for her to come and live with me. I live at altitude, she could not survive without oxygen, and she kept pulling it off. Want to or not, it was time for me to pack up, and go back home. Over the next few weeks, there were some phone conversations, but they were not good, they were pretty ugly actually. She called me on the fifteenth to wish me a Merry Christmas. A week went by, and the phone call came. The hospital made the call as easy as they could, and I appreciated their effort.

It was a day of introspection for me, as I went over that month in my mind. Fortunately for most of us, each day is not our last, and there is time to fix the something we did, or at least acknowledge our faults. I can not guess if that month was really a month with my Mom, or with a shell. A month where things were said, and I never knew if they were true, or even thought about.

Of course it was an hours walk today with a cold stiff breeze, thinking about those last days with my Mom to realize it does not matter. She’s gone, and I am left to walk, and wonder.

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Grateful for life and death lessons from pets in my life

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My first day off of my work week today and it sure feels good to sleep in. It would feel better if my cat did not have to come and wake me up to see if I am really supposed to be getting up or not, but we sometimes have to accept the good with the bad. It provides balance in our lives. I am grateful for all the pets I have had over the years. They help me prepare for everything in my life.

I had turtles when I was very young. I only remember because I did not know how to take care of them when it was time for them to hibernate, they started to stink instead of sleep like I was told they would do. While I never learned how to create a place for turtles to hibernate, I did have a quick lesson in death.

Next it was Guppies I had in a glass one gallon aquarium. I was given some weeds to put in so the guppies had some place to hide. They hid so well, when my Mom decided to clean the aquarium we counted over ninety guppies in various stages of growth. Deciding there was too much weed, the population was quickly reduced by guppy cannibalism. I learned about predatory behavior from Guppies.

We also had dogs over the years. One was a Spaniel/Labrador mix who had been hit by a car as a pup. His stomach muscles were hurt, and his belly was very low to the ground. One of the neighbors accused him of jumping a six foot fence and breeding with their Chihuahua. I was too young to understand about sex, but I did learn that sometimes people tried to pass off stories that were not completely true. That poor dog could barely climb stairs without dragging his belly let alone jump.

A few years later another dog who had made into his late twenties was dying in a painful way. My Mom and Dad talked it over, and decided the best thing to do was put him down. Put him down meant a bullet in the head in those days. My Mom took out the vacuum cleaner, and furiously started vacuuming an already clean floor as my father went outside with the dog, and did what had to be done. He was gone a while, but when he came in my Mom and I knew the dog was asleep, never to waken again. I learned about sorrow, and loss from that dog.

Next was a horse my folks had bought me. He was a Tennessee Walker colt. I could not ride him as he was too young, so he roamed the pasture with my sisters horse. One week we had some friends horses in our pasture, along with our own, and they were close to fighting. It was cold outside, so I dressed in a jacket with a hood and went out into the pasture among the horses. My horse picked me up by the hood of my coat and shook me all the way to the fence, and then threw me over the fence. I did not know it at the time, but I was given a harsh lesson in love by animals for their human family members. I do remember crying for about thirty minutes though….

Some years later the Spaniel/Labrador was at the end of his life. He was arthritic, and moving even slightly was very painful for him He could no longer walk, and did not care to eat or drink water. A family discussion was held, and it was decided that I would be the one to put him down. I had to carry him from the basement to the appointed place. I remember how hard it was to see where I was walking, stumbling at times. I said what I could manage to get out, and pulled the trigger. As much as it hurt, I knew what I did had to be done for his benefit. I learned about life, and love that day – and the pain of loss.

Many more animals came and left over the years, all of them leaving me with those special lessons that only a pet can give. I am grateful for all of them, and hope there are many more pets waiting for their turn in my life.

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My best friend Brad

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I had a friend of sorts a long time ago, I will call him Brad. He was two years older than me when we were kids, but he is still almost fourteen, and I am much older now. Brad never had a chance to grow up you see. I am sure our story is similar to a lot of stories, and perhaps Brad’s and my story is not any better than some stories people around you could tell you, if they chose to share with you.

When I was a child we lived out in the country, sort of. There were neighbors around us, and you saw a car going down the road once in a while, but not very often. The population of my school was a little over eight hundred at the time and that included kindergarten to grade twelve, so there weren’t a lot of us. Brad must have been the ripe old age of six or seven when he first started showing up at my house. Brad was the only boy to ever show up to play with me besides the much older boys who were interested in my sister. Being little and alone in the country, I was thrilled to have a play mate.

Except Brad was not all that good of a play mate. We would play sometimes, and have a lot of fun, though most times we would end up fighting, usually with me taking the worst of it, being smaller and younger. I did not know any better, and Brad was the only friend I had outside of school. My Dad always thought I should beat Brad up and be done with it, but I did not have it in me at that time. Bradley’s family was very different. Brad’s Mom was a rather stern woman with little to say other than correcting or berating Brad. Brad’s Dad was very quiet and serious. They both drank I knew, everyone I knew that was an adult drank, or almost everyone, so drinking was not unusal. Brad’s folks just did not seem to have fun when they drank, and that was unusual.

One summer day Brad was supposed to come over and play with me, just getting off of being grounded for a few weeks. My Mom received a phone call from a neighbor down the road. My Mom suddenly was all shook up, she told me Brad had been in an accident! We jumped in the car and took off down the road to a four way intersection about three-quarter’s of a mile away. There was Brad lying in the middle of the road, moaning, crying, and sort of calling for his Mother, all in all pretty scary looking. His Mom showed up and what she said to him, I would rather not say, but it was not nice.

According to the driver of the car that hit him, Brad was on his bicycle and raced right into the intersection. If Brad had been two seconds earlier or later, he would not have a broken arm, a broken leg, and some broken ribs. Brad spent five months that year in various casts. Brad had a repeat accident a few years later with another broken leg, smashed ribs, and two broken collar bones. Same thing, Brad was hit on bicycle crossing a highway, at the other end of the road from our houses.

Fast forward to three years later. Brad has no friends. Almost everyone near his age is scared of him, because he is so wild and scary. You didn’t know if Brad would want to talk, or hit you with his fist – or something worse. I remember Brad the last day of school that year. Brad was on his bicycle after school, riding through the small line of buses, yelling at kids and threatening them. He had red and blue finger paint on his face and a stick in his hand he was hitting people with as he rode by. He also had a trash can lid hanging off his back. The teachers and bus drivers chased him, but he just laughed and mocked them.

I no longer lived near Brad by then. Brad had spent some months away from his home for reasons I did not know about, so we were no longer that close. About three or four weeks later after school was out I was going to Brad’s funeral. Brad was killed on the same highway he had been hit on a few years earlier. This time there was no saving him. Brad has lost almost half of his face, and his rib cage was held up by wire as he lay in his coffin. His Mom told me both of his legs and one arm had been broken too.

I felt real bad about Brad when he was killed, I cried over him after I was finally alone. At the same time, I could not help but think that maybe this was as good as Brad was ever going to get in this lifetime?. Maybe it was for the best that Brad died at the ripe old age of thirteen and a half? I do not think about Brad now days as much as I used to. Life has a way about it in that it keeps moving onward presenting new obstacles. But when I see other children I think are being abused, or have been abused, I always think of Brad. I still wonder sometime if he is better off where ever he is now. I think for the time he lived in and the family he was a part of, he is better off, not that that makes it better.

Brad would be in a prison somewhere serving a life sentence, or worse if he were alive today. Maybe if Brad were born today, he would have had a chance at a better life, as times are so much different now than they were when we were kids. I would like to think so. I still miss Brad some times. Brad was not always a good friend, but he was my first and almost only friend all those years ago.

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