Please Die in a Car Crash
As I grow older, my life takes some weird curves. I begin to realize things are not always what they seem and the vast vacuum of my thoughts are forever changing. I was hit pretty hard by a few deaths as a child and always felt that death was horrible. Now, as I grow older, I see death as a different beast than I did as a little kid. What is death? It's when the lights get cut off and the microscope gets brought out. People handle death in odd funny ways, to me they have all been different. I didn't fully grasp the concept and who knows, maybe I still do not.
Let us travel back to the death of the first person who was close to me. This was my Grand Father. He was a giant to me as a child, a gentle giant but a giant none the less. He stood at 6'6 and around 270 pounds. I spent a lot of summers with him growing up as he was just a state away. I got to see a lot of family growing up. That changed when I got older and our family moved 800 miles away. My Grand Father got sick after we made that move and I was a teenager and stopped going to the mountains every summer.
The last time, I saw my Grand Father, he was a healthy and strong man. He wasn't diagnosed with cancer until we were many states away and he will always remain the same in my mind physically. I have since seen people with cancer, get treatments and slowly become shells of who they were. I am thankful for the very good memories of my Grand Father and his death became an extremely changing view of death. I was so angry when he passed. My mother had explained to me that Pap did not look like he used to and we would not be doing anything at his place except taking him to the doctors and each time we did he would be very sick.
I elected to stay home and not travel with the family, he passed away during this visit. I was enraged with hate. It came in cycles inward and outward. I didn't know what to feel or who to blame or what to do. My parents were still away at this point and it was my older brother who informed me of his passing. I proceeded to take a dining room set and destroy it against a tree in the front yard. I've never been a person who gets upset easily, never been one to throw a controller playing games or start fights for no reason. I had the misconception that destroying some stuff would change the way I was feeling. I grew up in a house where people threw things and hit people, just to hit them. I was sure there was some type of therapy in being destructive. It did nothing but ruin a dining room set. A lesson I learned from, destruction does no good for pain and anger.
Some years passed and as they did so did more people I knew. Nothing ever hit home, like that again, until the loss of our son. Pain and anger flushed through me like never before. As I held him that last time, I felt so much I was not able to process it. I have since decided it was better to have lost him early than watch in horror as he died slowly and never got to enjoy childhood as his time was spent in a hospital fighting to live. As a parent this is the only thought that brings any resemblance of life after death. I would have loved to get to know him and love him longer but what would have his fight for life accomplished for any of the rest of us? I know the difference in memories I have of my Grand Father compared to the others in my family who watched him waste away in the hospital.
I was angry at myself for many years after Pap died for not being there in the end. I slowly began to see the difference in what memories you have after someone passes. You never want someone to die alone and they never should but I am not sure if watching people die is the best approach for the soul. You're going to have memories of them after they pass either way but which memories are the best to get left with? You are the survivor, they are gone. Guilt will be a factor either way, no matter which course you choose to take at the end.
What do you want to be left with? This is the question I struggle with. I am starting to believe it is mentally better to be informed of death and deal with the memories and guilt of things unsaid than to watch someone die slowly during their final days. As I grow older I am sure these things will once again evolve in my mind. Deaths of those closer will of course make these ideas change, I think.
I now smile anytime I think of Pap, my dad still says how bad he was at the end, when anyone brings him up. I am happy, I only hold good memories of him in his life. I hold a lot of deathbed memories of other people who have passed. I think this is where my new outlook on death comes from.
Finding yourself fighting the guilt of not having said goodbye, not being there in the end is heartbreaking. I see so much more pain in the faces of those left behind, when they miss that window of time to visit someone as they pass. It is a much different pain than that held for someone who dies in an instance, like a car crash. It's a lot to take in when thinking about these things. I am not even sure which way I do feel, to be honest. I am a support at this time for my wife in the loss of her mother and my children as they lost their Grand Mother. We found out after the fact so this is similar to a car crash type death. I know my wife has her wheels turning in her mind in regards to what ifs. I want to be whatever she needs at this point, a crutch or a punching bag. Whatever helps her deal with what she is feeling and the same for the kids.
It's different for me, I am not processing it as a typical death. I am doing my best to figure out what I need to do for her loss. I am trying to spend as much time with her as possible as I don't really know what she is feeling. As I am sure she will do when I lose a parent. We lost a child together, that pain we shared. That death was and is our pain, this is hers. I am at a loss as to what she really needs, so I am just doing whatever she indicates she needs.
Emotions are a fickle bitch.
If you have made it this far through my ramblings
Thank you for being in our lives, we have now shared a birth and a death with our steemit family
How have you handled one death differently than another? Did age play a factor? Did having a family make it easier or harder? Do you feel death is easier as a car crash?
First of all, my condolences to yours old friend. Mothers are lights and when those lights go off, nothing usually makes sense for a long while. Especially with a sudden death.
I lost mine two decades ago and I clearly recall my teenage self saying to herself... 'if you don't break down, you will help your younger sisters stay strong'. I was a month away from 15, I knew nothing about strength. Though I was praised for being 'so composed', I never grieved my mum. My youngest sister screamed her lungs out, she was 8 :( and the second born fainted over being overwhelmed by grief... I, on the other hand, kept the darkness that came with her death for years. So I keep grieving due to locking the pain in for too long. I am working on my anger over her death also. She died at freaking 33 years! :(
Age though is teaching me that sometimes special souls have limited time on earth. Theirs is to be our guides and angels for a certain period then leave us be as they are called back to their roles as eternal angels. We too are angels on wait... it is the ways of life regardless of obvious attachment to those we term as blood.
I am sorry your souls are in turmoil; may peace find it's way to your hearts and may her soul rest in it.
I expect the younger one is the worse this is. You only know the mother you lived under and never experienced her as just the friend your children called Grand Mother.
Very interesting outlook. This leaves something to ponder.
Thank you for your words during this time.
She is. I worry about her soul constantly. She says she envies us for the time we had with mum then she is like maybe it's better she didn't know her because she sees the pain in our eyes when we talk about missing her. It's depressing... Death always is in a way.
I did read the whole thing, actually. I don't always read every word of the "longer" posts (not that this is that long), but I like your style of writing. And more importantly, this was very disarming and beautiful. And not so sad and depressing as it was sort of reassuring I guess, to see the growth you have gone through. Like it's not all bad.
This made me cry. I think a lot of people feel really guilty about this very thing. But in my experience, the people who pass on would much rather you remember them the way they were than the way they died. If that's any consolation.
I'd put it into a dialogue with gramps and ask him in your head, like what you think he would have said back. And I betcha he'd say something like, "Son, I know you were there. I'm glad you stayed home. You didn't need to see me like that. I had your parents to take care of me. I want you to remember me the way you do now. Good on 'ya."
I think as a boy, you deserved that right. As an adult, perhaps the responsibility shifts a little, but the concept is the same. I can't say I know what I'd do in that situation. I've never have anyone deteriorate like that. But either way, thanks for sharing your story.
As far as your wife, it sounds like you are handling it perfectly.
That is the question I am faced with. Should anyone feel guilty in the event this happens in this way? I find it much easier to talk to the dead after they have passed. I am in the mindset that guilt is an internal extension of pride. One feels guilty they were never able to say what they needed to say, not always what the dying needed to hear.
Thank you for your words in our time of mourning.
P.S. Do you really talk to the dead, or is it just something you do as a meditation. So like, they're not really there. But you picture them being there.
That was quite the read... Thank you for sharing, and my condolences...
My uncle has cancer... And his hopes seem slim. Both my grandmothers and an aunt died from cancer. Such a bitch disease.
My father died a few years ago very suddenly, not from cancer (basically suffocated because of a blood clot) and I hadn't seen him in a long time.
You ask about different ways of having handled deaths and I think something might be wrong with me in that, not even with my father's death did I feel that terrible. We weren't that close but we weren't not close either... And the most that happened was a sort of surrealness the next morning, thinking that he no longer existed...
No tears... Not even a lump in my throat.
I can understand this. I think you are normal. I think most grief is felt from the guilt of things unsaid and to be honest that guilt can be felt instantly or many years down the road. I know that a lot of pain can be felt down the road when you go to pick up the phone and call someone who has passed many years ago. There is so much life to deal with that death sometimes has to take a backseat.
There is, I know from experience, nothing anyone can say in response to the loss of a child. There are no words for having the guts ripped out.
I wrote a about my grandfather's death which I titled "Astral Travel", as my mother denied my claim I could have been there.
They stand weeping by the bed
Granddad is dead.
He is not sitting in his chair
with a face full of hair
with me on his knee
all snuggly as can be
listening to tales of
ships and whales
and of places
seen and been.
He is there,
but he is not.
They don't know
I am here to peek.
Daren't ask them
how to find my Granddad
so by myself I will
have to seek.
Three days before my son was hit by a drunken driver, I woke sitting up from a nightmare with a scream trapped in the back of my throat. When events unfolded I had the sense of being guided through the experience and believe had I not had that 'foreknowledge' I would never have come out of the mental hospital a year later.
Consider this reply a poor substitute for a hug.
Hugs felt! I know many do not understand the premonitions those of us who are sensitive can feel. We are all a little Indigo trying to find our ways back to one whole being, or at least I feel that way some days.
Some of us are on a path to do certain things and we must skip events in order to fully reach our potential. Existence for some is a must and for others, it is almost like a predetermined path that must go exactly as laid out. Some outcomes cannot be changed and some are aware of things others are not. We all have a different understanding and existence, I know we are on the right path and everything is exactly as it should be. I just wish dealing with certain things were easier.
Thank you for this post and sorry for your losses. In our society, death and grief are not spoken about enough, and so people don't know how to support others when a tragedy happens. This often makes dealing with a loss even harder, especially an out-of-order death one cannot rationalise. Your title does not do the post justice though. I flinched a little when I saw it as I have spent the past year supporting a family who have lost one of their young in a car crash (she was the pedestrian), and my daughters who lost their life-long friend and housemate. I have learned a lot in that year and wish I had done that learning before I needed it. My heart goes out to all parents who had to endure the loss of a child. I cannot imagine anything worse.
There are many things that go unspoken during life, that list is long and vast but death is towards the top. There are also many layers of death and each type is felt differently by each person in proximity to the death. There is an echo effect that ripples outward from a death and a birth.
Losing anyone is hard at some point, yes a child is unlike any other loss. There is no way to prepare for that type of loss. Nothing that can be said after to ease the tear felt in one's existence. No way to ever forget. It is the one time I truly thought that there may be some type of needed continued existence of lobotomy experiments, to master the selective removal of certain memories.
My heart goes out to those you speak of.
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