By: Rachel Murphy
Rachel with her dad, Kevin, and stepmom, Teresa, at the Lily Pad Hopyard Brewery in Lancing, TN, 2022.
“I am continually surprised when friends and strangers act as though any talk of death is a sign of pessimism or morbidity. Death is among us. To see it always and only as a negative subject is to lose sight of its power to enhance every moment.”
-bell hooks, All About Love
I still leave full water pitchers around the house to water my plants, the way my stepmom did. I still decorate butter cookies with colored royal icing at Christmastime just like my Grandma taught me. I didn’t even recognize the preciousness of these small habits until after these women were gone. And now, I think I am a patchwork quilt of all the caring and quirkiness of those who came before me.
It’s February or March of 2024. I am talking with my Mexican-American friend Ana about the unfairness of my stepmother’s recent, untimely death. I explain to her how it’s just extra sad and unfair to lose someone before you think you’re going to. Thinking back on it now, that’s the word I said: unfair.
“And that’s kind of where Americans are wrong,” she explained. “In the U.S, people think they are owed a certain amount of life. We think we’ve conquered mortality in some way, and feel as if we are entitled to a certain number of years. But that’s just not true, that’s not how it is.”
On a theoretical level, her argument is sound, provocative. And yet, it still feels unfair to me. How can my Dad meet the love of his life and only get to spend 10 years with her?
Why do some people get more time than others?
And yet, we can’t just go around regretting everything that will one day be gone, out of our reach.
(And yet, I do it anyway.)
As someone who hadn’t experienced an unexpected death in their close circle until age 25, I can only say that I think I would be thoroughly a different person if it had happened earlier in life. The fabric of my being has been rewoven in order to accommodate this story and this person and this grieving.
Winnie the Pooh: “How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.”
I think there is something to fear in death in that we have no control as to when it will happen. But I do not think there is anything to fear about what follows it or if we will be in pain when it comes. Reading accounts of near death experiences and past life regressions, there seems to be general consensus that we feel at peace when we leave. It seems that most older people are calm and accepting as they pass on from this Earth. They might even “see” loved ones who have already crossed, who are there to walk with them to the next place.
The side to fear is not death, but rather life. This, the here and now, the grieving, is the hard part.
Twitter user @petfurniture on their hopes of death.
Of the things we can’t control, there are many greater to fear than death. It seems to me that with death, we are going into the light, we are being reconnected with the ones who have passed before us. It’s easy to think that those on the other side are happy and free. With life, we are still hurting, left alone, without the divine connection of our parents, lovers, and friends. With life, we have to persevere.
Even when you know someone is closer to death, you still don’t quite expect it. We are human. We’re not meant to expect death, I guess. That’s just not for us to know.
Rachel hiking with her stepmom last summer.
If you could control how you died, would you even want to? That’s a tricky one. I mean, what if you could be sure that you died at the end of a long life with all your friends and family around you. Wouldn’t you choose that? But then again, just because not everyone is afforded that luxury doesn’t mean anyone is lesser than for having died in a certain way. There’s no shame in death or dying, only in not respecting it. We are not the ones in control.
Death is a reminder of all that we stand to lose —not because we will one day be gone from this Earth, but rather because when we go through our lives disconnected from what matters, we lose precious moments that we can’t get back.
It’s a big responsibility knowing that your life is full of precious moments, knowing that we must cherish each and every little thing as it comes to us. It can be a lot. But at least it is the part that we can control.
And we can remember our loved ones, cherishing the spark they brought into the world. And continue their memory in our own lives, as people will do for us one day, too.
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