May 1943-January 2012
Tuesday, January 17, 2012 at 4:03AM | by Otter The bustle in a house
The morning after death
Is solemnest of industries
Enacted upon earth,—
The sweeping up the heart,
And putting love away
We shall not want to use again
Until eternity.
— Emily Dickinson
The process of dying, and going through that process with somebody you love, changes you.
I mean apart from the thirty extra pounds it put on me because of the tightened schedule, the lack of free time, the strange eating habits, and the worry.
When death finally comes, it’s a bit of a relief.
Mom died at home. We’re waiting on the funeral home to come pick her up. We’ve sung together, prayed together, talked together, and suddenly, we all feel lighter.
Her suffering, we presume, left with her.
The months of preparing for death make it, to tell the truth, relatively easy. It means we can miss her. We aren’t stunned, we aren’t shocked, we aren’t blasted or blitzed.
We’re mainly tired and hungry. We’re making eggs and pancakes and coffee. We’ve got some champagne chilling. We mean to drink a toast to my mother’s memory.
I’ve been glancing through the notes of support and sympathy that I’ve gotten lately.
Some are circumspect and tactful, some take refuge in sympathetic formulae; some are wildly off the mark in diagnosing what I must be going through.
What it comes to in the end is that my mother has died. There’s work to be done, music to be prepared, endless calls to field and to make, relatives to greet, dry-cleaning to attend to, sheets to be washed, and medical equipment to return.
But that’s just details. I’m tired, and hungry, and ready to begin living again a little bit. I think I’ll start by having breakfast with my family, and remembering mom’s good life. And then by going to the gym for a pre-dawn workout, and sweating, and listening to music. I might cry now and then there at the gym. Grief is a sudden strike of lightening that can catch you unawares. But for now, it’s time to fold the easter linens of love and store them away for eternity.
Then I’m going to take a shower, turn off my phone, and get into bed. There will be things to deal with. Let them come.
My mother isn’t suffering anymore. The cancer that killed her is dead. That’s enough for me for now.
Death and cancer take something from you that you can’t get back. But you learn how to let it go over the long process. You learn how to hate the suffering as much as you hate death, and maybe more.
It’s a hard reality to face, the fundamental one: we die, often in pain. Pain and life cease together.
It grows you up a bit.
