No matter what, the topic of death brings up many images within the minds of those that hear that word, “DEATH”. Is it the end or a beginning? Is it the final period to a life lived? a question mark that will leave more questions than answers? to be feared or looked forward to? These and many other questions come to mind when the word “DEATH” breaks into the topic.

We expect the old to die. It is a given. I know of no one that has been able to escape it or gotten out of it. It is inevitable for all of us. For the average person, we know not the time or place when it will happen, we just know that one day it will. But it is also true that the young can die and never make it to ‘old’.

So what is the mystery of death? The mystery that brings up all sorts of thoughts, fears, even dread for some – a longing for, hoping for in others?

It is the taking of that last breath. To lose the abilityto walk and talk at will with others at will because the will will cease as well. The ability to see a sunrise or sunset again, to walk by the water and feel it splash on your feet, to see the look of love and longing in anothers eyes.

I don’t think that it is so much ‘death’ that scares people as coming to realize just wha it is that is lost after it happens that scares the most. All the known senses as we know them no longer work. No longer able to experience a touch, a look, to laugh, to kiss and be kissed. All the simple things that we take for granted no longer are as we have come to rest in and just expect to always be there.

I used to think that the one most effected by death was the person that died. No longer think that. For them, it is over, the work is done, experiences are over. If you are a person of faith, have a belief in going to whatever place it is that your faith tells you and you believe in. Putting that aside, I have tried to take a closer look at just what it is that I think of when the word comes up. I base it on my own experience, what I learned and have seen, what I have felt – which might work with your view or not.

I have come to see ‘death’ as that happening where all of a sudden a person that you have come to depend upon, believed in, possibly loved and cared for is no longer involved in my life. I find myself thinking of things that I want to say to them – then remember that they are not there to hear. The hugs we no longer will get from them. Words and talks that will never again be able to be expressed to gather insights with them again. The small simple things that till they are gone we don’t realize just how much we looked forward to.

The worst is when people walk up to you and tell you that they understand. How could they? They are not you. They don’t know all the secret details that are in every relationship which make it a unique living, breathing presence that has now turned into a void. Time doesn’t erase the knowledge of rememberance of that relationship. The pain will soften with time, but just as an old scar can and will hurt long after the injury, so does the missing of another.

The reaction to death is different depending upon the person and relationship a person had with the person that died.

When my father died I felt nothing. Never was close to him, didn’t really care for him as a person. I remember mostly his temper, his anger, the abuse to my mother. His death was an ending to a negative view of life, a death of its own brought about by his own death.

When my mother died, I remember the total anger that I felt at her passng. I remember going out in her garden one day and yelling at the sky, asking God why this was happening? Why after all the years of not being accepted by this woman, when she finally accepted me as her daughter is right as she was getting ready to draw her last breath. When sitting with my mother late one night,she came out of her coma long enough to tell me two short phrases, “It is ok” and “You did alright”. I still wonder what she meant when she said those things. WHAT was ‘ok’ about anything going on? WHAT is it that she finally thought that I did that was “alright”? I have never found out.

When my husband died. So many things going on. So many things that were hidden came to light. So many people that I didn’t want to find out about them and trying to cover for my husband, the last time that I ever would. So unexpected. So unreal. A nightmare to go and see his body, not to believe that he really was dead and asking him to please wake up. A sleepwalking experience that was done while awake. Getting in bed that night and still being able to smell him on his pillow.

Most of us look at death as the ending. But it isn’t. We move on. Not the same as if they were still with us, but we do move on. We carry them within us. We say phrases that they said, remember good times had – and even the bad ones. We remember. They still live within us, part of us that can’t be taken away. A part of them that we will take to our own death.

Is death the end or just another facet of a life that we don’t understand?