Grief

I was talking to a friend about death after her mother's passing.  It wasn't morbid, just matter-of-fact.

We nattered a bit about life after death (which I believe in and she doesn't) and the possibility of reincarnation ( which she believes in and I don't).  We agreed to disagree.  At least we both believe in something.  How sad that some folks see death only as an ending.

Both of us want to be remembered for something--I, for my words; she for her cinnamon rolls.  We both believe in a Supreme Being--mine is God, hers is Mother Earth.  I am a wish-I'd been-a-hippie; she is an aging one.

Our light friendship is probably not sustainable.  We came together when I lost my mother to Alzheimer's and hers was showing early signs.  We bonded a bit over discovering our fathers had passed about the same time, the commonality of our jobs and our love of coffee and chocolate.  We talk about many things but have yet to find anything that will keep us together.

When we began to speak of death there was no weeping or thrashing.  At a certain age, one begins to accept death and separation of loved ones as a part of life.  It happens.  We grieve.  We move on.  We are not afraid to die because we both know we will live again--I at the resurrection, she in a new person.  We are more afraid of not living.

We watched our fathers pass suddenly into the Great Beyond.  It was as if they said, "OK, I'm done here" and left.  The pain was swift in coming, but at last we can talk bout them, flaws and all, and laugh.  The pain doesn't go away--it has been nine years--but it does subside.

But our mothers...we watched them go from beautiful, vibrant women with laughter that makes Heaven sing to frail, sad and forgetful.  They who gave so much in their younger days had an illness that robbed them of their essence.  Her mother, like Mom, was gone long before her body gave up.

There is a thread between us, tenuous though it may be.  We see ourselves in our mothers.  We still aren't afraid of death, it worries us a bit how we will get there.

So I shared my blog, right from the beginning, when I began my journey to become whole.  Every time I thought I had achieved that...well, things changed.

As we spoke of death I realized there are many kinds of dying inside each of us.  Physical death is one thing.  But the losing of a job, separation or divorce from a loved one, moving out of one's home, watching a child grow away from you, the emotional loss of a friend--all of these can generate the stages of grief.  It's the way we humans are.

So once again I look at my life--the pros and cons of it all.  The list of "cons" was very short.  I thought hard but could add none.

The "Pro" list, however, keeps growing.  I can add to it every second without even trying.

Death can come quickly, like it did with my Dad, mercifully taking us  in mid-stride.  Or after a long illness, like with Mom.  So now I have decided that everything that wastes those precious minutes will have to go--the clutter from my closet, the stress from the job, the people who drag me down--anything that robs me of my essential comfort.

I am ready to live every second I have left.