Death
My sister passed yesterday around 9PM. She lingered but for a short while, perhaps two hours after the nurse called to say that she was passing.
I cannot say what death is as I cannot say what life is. It is concrete, a singular experience for each of us. No one can define what another’s life or death is. How can I even define my own life? That is because I am on the inside, and lack any perspective at all for a wider point of view. I just do the best that I can to live the life that I happen to have, to play the hand that I have been dealt. Soon enough time will come when I must fold, lay my cards on the table. No time for another hand. I’ll make my exit as has everyone else who has ever lived.
Everything that lives dies, everything comes to it’s end.
Farewell dear sister.
Linda Kay King February 2, 1951 – July 27, 2019
2 thoughts on “Death”
Your posts of “Life” and of “Death” were quite poignant and clearly heartfelt. The acceptance of our ultimate demise is difficult for most of us, for the world exists only from our own personal perspective. It’s almost impossible to imagine that world without us in it, but the wheels of that internal narrative do not slow down and certainly do not stop until we exit.
I know I’ve used this metaphor in earlier writings, but we are tethered to our world, our friends, our ancestors, and the objects that surround us. When one of the tethers breaks through loss, we cannot help feeling the acute distress that accompanies that loss and yet the object or person that is gone lingers within us. We keep the memory or feeling alive. I can still hear my mother laugh, though I will never hear her laugh again. Our sorrow comes from not being able to continue the dialogue, that whatever interaction we’ve had in the past has proven to be finite.
I have kept my father’s last few messages to me on my phone so that I can hear his voice when I have the strength to listen. I know that it will be the same for you and that your sister will remain with you in so many ways.
Yes, we are of this world. The love of life here, is inseparable from our sense of life and being a self. I do not look forward to leaving, and I hate it when family and friends have to leave. I have thought lately that there was a time before I was here. It follows that all will be well when I am no longer here. I believe though, that our world is imperceptibly altered by each person who has been born and lived.