And sometimes we cry...

Sage says:

I found out on Facebook that my brother-in-law passed away. 

Let me backtrack.  

I had an older half-sister.  Ironically, I found out about her passing from my parents, because my brother saw it on Facebook. 

She and I weren't close.  She had a lot of issues, and we just didn't have much of a relationship.  When I found out that she passed away,  I got in touch with my brother-in-law.  We talked a lot as we worked through the hurt and shock of her death.  I felt a lot of comfort in suddenly feeling like I had a relationship with some part of her world.  He loved her, and while his world was a million crazy miles away from mine, we connected and could talk honestly about the loss we were dealing with.  We started talking less and texting more as her death became less of a shock and we both were merging back into our lives.  When I talked to him last he had gotten a DWI.  He was struggling with life.  He was also honest and holding himself accountable for his actions.  I admired him, DWI aside.  So many people find someone else to blame and he was cutting himself no slack.

 

The last thing I told him was that I loved him. 

Then I decide to look at my sisters Facebook page and there's a picture of Chris, with a post from someone saying Rest In Peace. 

I showed it to my husband.

I start searching online for the obituary and couldn't  find one. 

This worried me. 

Why wasn't there an obituary? 

Why didn't someone pick up his phone and heck, send a text message to his friends and say hey – this person has passed. 

But then why would anyone say anything to a barely known sister-in-law when no one even bothered to tell a father, brother or sister when my sister passed away.

Squirrel!  I'm working through this.  I just heard a radio dj talking about how terrible it is to text about someone passing.  I disagree.  It gives you that time to say holy crap.  You can be silent and deal with ugly crying sounds, or gasps, or whatever your way of dealing with it is.  It’s the virtual bathroom wall age.  It is communicating, however one sided.  I’m ok with one sided.  I’m ok with staring in disbelief and shock, and having a few moments to gather yourself. 

I messaged my sister’s friend that I actually remembered, and she tells me that he did pass away.  A stroke.  A month ago.  I think to myself, a stroke brought on by a broken heart.  And she tells me no family left, so no funeral. 

I really struggle with the no obituary thing. 

It just seems sad that someone didn't write down something about his life. 

I’m not sure what needs to be said but it bothers me that someone hasn't done it.  I think about if I should and I realize I don't even know his birthdate.  I'm not even sure, since a month has already passed, if it would even be an option.  I really don't know what the rules of death and its components are. 

I realize how lucky most of us are to have someone who would write our obituary.  If I wrote one for him I'd say he loved my sister, despite all her screwed up issues.  I'd say he held his head up even through hard times, and most of his times were hard.  I'd remember how at their wedding they both looked so happy.  How the song they played had the line who else is gonna bring you a bottle of rain…

Shayla says:

I’ve been around death more than the average person. No, I’m not the Grim Reaper nor do I have such a bad string of luck that people around me are dropping dead like flies. I used to be a hospice social worker. Used to be.

ADD sidebar: Okay since I mentioned the Grim Reaper, I have to tell this quick story. One time, two of my hospice co-workers and I were headed to a fellow hospice co-worker’s Halloween party one weekend evening. As we turned the corner, by the cover of darkness the Grim Reaper comes rollerblading by us with a sense of purpose. Yeah we’d all witnessed death quite often, but this is the first time we’d seen him on roller skates.

When I was a hospice social worker, people would always tell me, “Wow. I don’t know how you can do your job. It must be so sad.”

Sometimes it was.

Sometimes I would go home at the end of a visit…not even the end of the day…and just curl up in my bed under the covers to clear my head for a little bit.

But strangely it wasn’t the dying that draped around my shoulders like a shawl made of steel. The saddest part was usually how people were living, not dying.

The first time I interviewed to become a hospice social worker, the interviewer asked me “why hospice?” Not a lot of people want to be smack dab in the epicenter of grief. It makes them uncomfortable. It makes them contemplate their own lives. It makes them regret. It makes them sad. It makes them angry. My answer? “I just figure, everyone wants to be there for the good life changes that naturally occur…birth…birthdays...sporting events…baptisms…bar mitzvahs…weddings. But what an honor to be allowed to be there for the conclusion of all of those things.” And I meant it.

But the thing you find out when you’re working with the dying is that not everyone has had a life well lived.

Like the woman who died at 42-years-old of cervical cancer because she didn’t have insurance to get treatment for it. She spent most of her twenties strung out on drugs and having babies that were taken away by CPS. And I know there are people that will say she got what she deserved because of how she lived her life. But they didn’t sit and hold her hand when the doctors told her she had weeks to live. And they didn’t watch her children, all in their twenties by now, come in one by one and sob not only for the mom they didn’t know but the mom they never will.

And that’s what death is really about…not the person who died, but the ones who survive them--The ones that are still here in flesh and blood and tears and snot.

It’s why we have funerals and obituaries and rituals and eulogies. Because we want the world to know that this person mattered…and part of us fears that there won’t be someone to feel the same way about us when we go.

I sometimes contemplate my own fate.

Have I lived my life well enough that for the sake of my own children who see me as this constant source of support in their lives would get support from others in their grief?

Once upon a time, I could’ve given a resounding “yes” to that question. I was that “go to” gal always ready to jump in and lend a hand, cause a laugh, give a hug, send a card, or just listen.

Lately I’ve been in this self-imposed bubble away from the rest of the world. Sometimes I get weary of the world around me and take small breaks. I absorb emotions of others better than any Bounty paper towel claims to clean up a mess. So I wring myself out and hope that it doesn’t leave me hard and crusty and unable to have purpose once again for the human race.

Basically, I’m hoping that being a selfish asshole isn’t the legacy I leave behind.

But reading about Sage and her brother-in-law makes me think that somewhere out there, there might just be at least one person that would want my obituary in the paper…to prove to the world my life had merit, whether I deserve it or not.

And so I say to you, dear Sage, as someone who used to be a hospice social worker-- even if an announcement of his death never appears in the daily newspaper, you’ve done something more commendable.

You’ve recognized his life…and I think that’s more than anyone can hope for.