comfort in death

My parents last year on their 30+ day cruise around South America.

     News of director Nora Ephron's death today caused me to start thinking more than I have been about the finite lives of my family. My mother is the same age Ms Ephron was. My father is 2 years older. I'm 40 and probably in the busiest professional period of my life which makes seeing them all the more challenging. I live in LA, they split their time between Delaware and Florida. Seeing them is not an easy task but needs to be more of a priority. They're not sick, mind you. they are healthy as can be, travel constantly and are thoroughly poster seniors for active living. That's my excuse along with my schedule for not visiting. With today's death of a gifted director the same age as my parents, i'm rethinking...
     My family is no stranger to death. My father ran nursing homes and retirement communities. My mother was a hospice nurse. Death on a weekly basis. Jokes and stories about people's passing when appropriate. Amazing stories to comfort any fear. Death was always part of some conversation going on around the house so it seemed just as much a part of life as discussing weekly activities. Then my little brother died.
    Jimmy was born in 1979 with a tumor on his rib. when he was old enough it was removed, and things were fine for a little while. Myself, my older sister and my younger brother were all in grade school and were not told exactly what was going on, as we shouldn't have been, given our ages. But my parents started going away with Jimmy for extended periods of time, one of them then both of them, to Sloan Kettering Hospital in New York. When they went together, we were sent to live with neighbors or family members depending on if school was in session. It took a village, and luckily we had one, to keep life as normal as it could be for the rest of us.
     In November of 1982, we all went to the city and stayed in the Ronald McDonald House while Jimmy's condition worsened. We were supposed to go with the rest of the kids to sit in the booth with Michael Landon (Little House was really popular at the time) for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, but early in the morning the phone rang, and my father and sister left. When my brother and I got up, the women who worked there told us that we couldn't go and to wait for my parents to get back, so we watched TV. When both parents and my sister got back we all went up to the room without anyone saying a word, sat on the bed, and my father told us that Jimmy died. He and my mother and my sister and me and my brother all burst into tears and just sat there crying for I don't know how long, holding each other.
     On New Years day, Jimmy's hospital roommate died as well. She had been fighting cancer, had a leg amputated, was undergoing chemo, and was 10 years old like me. I think she had a crush on me too. I wish I could remember her name.
     That spring Suzie Calarco, a girl in my 5th grade class who had been fighting leukemia, passed away. She was a friend I had known since preschool. She also was 10 years old. She happened to be the next member of our church parish to pass away, and is buried right next to my brother, so when I go back to the cemetery in Yardley PA, I get to visit both of them.
     Now again at 32 I lost my partner of 12 years (Blog post #1) and my dog of 12 years. Still wasn't prepared despite all my childhood surroundings. That's the thing about death I am learning. You can be surrounded by it, know it, see it, study it but still never ever be prepared for it. Nothing seemed to brace me or prepare me for each of the gut punches I've felt over the years. Each one was unique. each grieving process different, and none of them ever go away 100%. Each death has become woven in to my character. each one revisits me periodically, and is different each time. I'm less emotionally volatile around them, but no less affected by their impact. I'm hesitant in relationships to a degree. I don't want to lose anyone ever again, but unfortunately that's just impossible.
     Death a part of life and I know that. It's inevitable, expected, and all too common in my life. I'm as prepared as I can be for the next one...but it'll still fuck me up when it happens. Now though, I am so thankful for my partner, and all my friends that have become my support network. I know that when the next death of a loved one occurs that I won't need to be alone like I was at 32. I won't melt down and try to self destruct like I did at 32. I will have hands to hold and shoulders to lean on. And that is a miracle in my life. Those relationships are what make everything in life better.

Anyway, no one I know is allowed to die any time soon. that's an order. and if you do, I'm never speaking to you again.