Reflections

Death

• By fannieb
• October 19, 2015
• No Comments

Much like a stream of water that flows through rock and over the course of time carves out a beautiful canyon, the deaths of my family and friends are changing me into someone very different from who I’ve known myself to be.

After the death of my father five years ago, I got really disgusted with my husband and the way he acted regarding my father’s illness and death. This was not the only thing that made me know our relationship had run its course, but it was just about the last straw. My father’s death illuminated two things for me –  the untruthful character of my husband which I’d been tolerating for 6 of the 7 years we were married and the reality that the amount of time left for me to be happy was dwindling. And so in 2011 I asked for a divorce and endured the stress of getting out of an unhappy marriage. In the end the pain of this change was worth it and necessary for me to grow and be more content. My father’s death taught me that I can’t please others at the expense of my own happiness; my time in this life is too precious.

Three years after my dad died, my mom followed. This was less unexpected and my father’s death had cut through the fairy tale I had been living in and woke me up to the fact that death really happens. The lives of people I’ve known forever do end. And they disappear leaving only their stuff and memories they helped create. So my mother’s death, though especially difficult since I was closer to her than I had been with my father, changed me in a different way; it made me think of this loss with more hope than despair, especially at the one-year anniversary of her death. That day, I experienced a profound epiphany. I realized that despite being fatherless and motherless I had been raised to be a very capable human being who could live a successful life alone. It was empowering and it started to make me think differently. I began to imagine things I had never thought of before-like taking trips out of the country, becoming fluent in another language, and falling in love with the abstraction of a new life in France. My mother’s death sparked in me a rebirth of my creativity, adventurousness, and courage. The transition of both of my parents to the afterlife created a void in my life that is allowing me to know how powerful I am and has given me permission to shine.

On Friday night I was dealt another blow to the structure of my reality. I found out that Tim, my high school sweetheart, had died two weeks earlier. We hadn’t been in contact for close to 25 years but our relationship fell at a very formative time in my life. His death shook loose in me the memory of who I was at 17, 21, and 25 and the youthful life experiences we had shared. And now that Tim is no longer walking the earth the reality of who I was and was becoming in the 80s and early 90s, the precursor to who I am today, just got erased, at least partially. With this erasure thoughts of my own mortality came up in me. Tim was only 49 and I’m 48. And while I’m not fearful of death I don’t want to die with my song unsung, my book unwritten, and my gifts left unwrapped and hidden from those who have a deep need to experience them.

In less than three months I’ll be 49 and my time could run out just as Tim’s did. I don’t want to feel regrets that I spent the bulk of my life doing things that made me unhappy. I don’t want to experience the rest of my life all alone without a suitable partner. And I don’t want to look back on my life disappointed that I never took the chance to live my dreams. And so from Tim’s untimely death, I’m gleaning the message here to be: get busy living the life God intended for me to experience  – risks and all.

Photo Credit: Scott1346