DEATH BECOMES US

I recently attended a dear friend and colleagues Mother’s funeral services and the experience prompted me to revisit this piece. More on that later. Her Mother was and IS a rockstar and I want to thank them both for the inspiration and reinvigoration.

Reminder: This Blog touches on the varying types and stages of depression. This entry covers Grief as a trigger for depression. If either before, during, or after reading this entry, you have suicidal thoughts or feelings, please call the National Suicide Hotline (988) or your local therapist, police, friend, or family member. Just CALL.

So, why would a mental health blogging space publish a piece titled Death Becomes Us?  Let’s revisit. Essentially, this piece is NOT about death, as much as it is about life, and more importantly; LIVING LIFE. So, hang in there, literally. As a person who has suffered (and still does often)  with depression and thoughts of suicide, I will be the first one to tell you DO NOT TAKE A LIFE- YOUR'S NOR ANYONE ELSE'S. Our lives are a gift, it’s literally the only thing we are born with, and it’s extremely valuable no matter what we may think of it. We can mold and shape it however we want, we can even recreate another life in our very own likeness. Now that is a gift!

I’d been surrounded by death from a very early age, earlier than I’d even realized. For some reason that wasn’t fully known to me at the time, I’d always felt a heavy sense of loss or sadness. I could never quite put my finger on it but I remember frequently-and later constantly-wishing I was dead. At around age 12 or 13, I half-heartedly took some pills so I could just go away. Obviously I survived. After that, life just went on.

If you have been following this blog (ha-ha, although inconsistent), you will recall that I am an adoptee, or more accurately a late discovery adoptee. I mention this only for clarity sake, as a possible reason for my seemingly “detached” attitude”, always on the defensive about the people I was “attached” to leaving me; early, often and unannounced. Abandonment is a hard pill (pun intended) to swallow for anyone- let alone a child.

After the “loss” of my biological mother (which again, I didn’t reconcile until about 3 years ago thanks to therapy), the next series of losses, seemed to come in quick succession, and they were heavy losses. My adoptive mother died when I was 19 years old, 2 months after I had my first and only child. Over the next several years, both of my grandparents would die a few years apart from each other, then my son’s paternal grandmother, my best friend’s mother and step-father, who became like parents to me, and eventually my adoptive father. I had developed a thick skin concerning death, or loss. Friends would wonder why I was always talking about dying or death; frequently calling me obsessed, and expressing their annoyance at my flip attitude towards it.

To be clear, the words death and loss don't always pertain to physical death of a being. They can also mean the loss of a relationship, friendship, monetary possessions and other intangible things that we hold dear to us. Think back to your first heartache, or perhaps the loss of a job you really enjoyed. Even a constant feeling of loss of money leaving your hands if you were unsure of when the next payday would come or if you’d have enough to get by until it did. These losses add up over time, and just like anything else, the more you experience or do something the easier it becomes to handle or deal with.

Anyway, a welcomed long break ensued after that, where I didn’t have any direct losses but yes, people were still dying of course. Then in 2015 my son’s father (more on THAT much later) died after a lengthy illness. And while were were not together (in forever) my son was not able to be present to support him, so I was (and would do it over again). I basically watched him die over several months. I’m not sure how I survived that period, with all the drama that ensued as a result of his passing. I think it was then that my attitude on killing myself and being in such despair about death changed.

Death can also be described as ceasing to be alive WHILE alive. People like myself who suffer with chronic depression can have a difficult time recovering after losses. In some cases people with no clinical depression history can suffer deeply from depression after a heavy loss such as that of a child, parent or sibling.

We think about harming ourselves (or others!) as a way to ease our pain. We think about harming ourselves- incorrectly assuming that if we were dead their lives would somehow be better off.

Death is a part of life. No one is getting out in the shell they arrive in alive. It’s the way it is. There is really no need for us to intervene on the Universe’s or the Creator’s behalf. They have that pretty well covered. The plan for us to die exists before we are even born.

If we spent (speaking for myself) as much time obsessing over living as much as or more than dying, our lives would be exponentially better and brighter. Death would not be so scary. Would it still hurt? Absolutely! But seeing (if we can) our loved ones get together and honor the life we LIVED and LOVED while we were here, makes everything worthwhile, including making a conscious decision to not harm the people who love us by harming ourselves. Because again, the people that love you, and YES THERE ARE people that love you, would be left in turmoil, no matter the circumstances of your death. 

As promised, I am circling back to the funeral I attended recently, the first one since my son’s father in 2015 actually. I wasn’t ready for it, and I know damn well neither was my friend - it was her MOTHER after all. But I showed up with my best face and attire, and ready to dole out hugs that I needed as much as the family and friends did.

I got there early and stayed as late as I could. I watched and admired everyone coming in to pay their respects. I watched my friend, having been in her space times before, going back and forth between being a gracious hostess thanking everyone for showing up, and being the grieving child who’d just lost her lifeline. She handled both roles as well as could be expected and even better in my opinion. The thing about death and funerals is that it makes you think about your own mortality. And for the first time in a long time, I thought about my Death brightly and enthusiastically. In that I knew I had to get moving on living and loving myself and others if I wanted people to remember, honor and show up for me as I’d witnessed here.

If we take matters into our own hands and circumvent the perfect plans laid for us, by taking our own lives, we cheat our loved ones out of their opportunity to honor us. We cheat them out of them one day moving on from the loss. We cheat them out of closure and peace and that is just not fair.

The one thing I took away from this service was to always have your table prepared. For guests, for a listening ear, for your children, for the day that your loved ones will gather around and honor the life you so abundantly and richly lived. While we are busy living, death eventually becomes us all.

A prepared table is a warm welcome.