On Death and Dying

(The following is fictional. Thinking of turning it into the first chapter of a book I'd like to write...)

When somebody’s dead, they’re dead. Gone. They won’t be stopping by for tea next week or texting you a funny gif that you nonchalantly respond to with, “I’m dying” and one of those crying laughing face emojis. So why do we refer to death as loss?

“Oh, she lost her father last week,” or “Let’s talk about the pain of losing someone.”

Loss implies that the person might somehow be found again, like your favorite pair of socks that you thought had vanished but really just fell behind the dryer. I guess you could argue that the word works if you’re talking about losing someone to somewhere else, as in, you’ll see them again in heaven or the great beyond or whatever you want to call the thing that, despite a significant lack of scientific evidence, you lie in bed at night hoping exists because you’d really like to see your dog again.

But even then, the person’s not truly lost, are they? They’re exactly where they’re supposed to be. It’s not like you ever hear about people getting misplaced into heaven, Peter forgetting his glasses and reading the wrong name at the Pearly Gates. Can you imagine Ruth Bader Ginsburg crossing over and being greeted by Hitler all because of a clerical error?

I don’t think so.

When my mother died, I didn’t feel like she was lost. That would have been a luxury, knowing there was a chance I’d stumble upon her again one day when organizing my closet or looking under the bed. In truth, the person who felt lost was me. I know it’s a cliché to say that nothing in life seemed to make sense anymore, but as David Bowie once said, “All clichés are true,” and who doesn’t trust Bowie?

Without her, everywhere I went and everything I did looked and felt completely unfamiliar. People, going about their regular routines – running, shopping, eating – as if everything was fine. How could they go on laughing and exercising and taking pleasure in pizza when MY MOTHER WAS DEAD? I was also convinced that everyone I knew was having the time of their lives and being totally ungrateful for it. They were blissfully unaware of the kind of pain I carried everywhere. It felt like a hand continuously squishing my heart and twisting up my guts pretty much any time I tried to walk out the door.

“You’re next, motherfuckers!” I shouted inside my head as I passed people on the street. I moved slow and stiff, every bone in my body aching, every muscle exhausted beyond its limit. It was as if I’d aged decades in just a few short minutes of a single phone call.

~

“Catie Girl,” my father’s voice trembled on the other side of the phone, a more desperate version of how it sounded some other times, like when I left for college or gave him a particularly good Father’s Day card.

“It’s your mom, she…”

And then he didn’t continue speaking English. Instead, he let out a guttural, otherworldly sound that startled me so much I dropped my phone to the floor as if it had burned my hand. I’d never heard my father – or anyone – sound like this. I wasn’t yet familiar with the primal nature of this kind of pain. The kind that unleashes a dam within you that you might never be able to close.

When I finally picked the phone back up, my hand shook along with my voice. First, I asked him, “What do you mean?” I was quiet. Like a confused child. My brain could not comprehend what was happening, what had already happened.

Then I tried pleading. “What do you mean?” because I wanted it not to be true. I thought, maybe if I kept asking in earnest he would just relent and say, ‘Okay, nevermind, I take it back.’

But when he didn’t, I couldn’t control myself. I felt like I was going to puke and pass out at the same, like back when I was a kid and I ripped all the ligaments in my ankle jumping on a trampoline, except this time, the pain flowed through my entire body. There was too much of it to keep inside, and so I screamed. I cried. I choked into the stupid cell phone. “DADDY, WHAT DO YOU MEAN?!”

The last time I called my father “Daddy” I was probably 10 years old. This was the sound of my dam breaking.

The rest of that day was a blur. What was incomprehensible to me then is still incomprehensible to me now, but not in the same way. Back then, it was about being unable to process such an unexpected seismic shift in my universe. Now, I’ve processed it insofar as at present, I can concretely say that my mother is, in fact, dead, but I still don't get why she’s gone. She hasn’t been lost; rather, she’s been taken – no, ripped – from me. Gone before she had a chance to see me publish my first novel or get married or maybe have a kid of my own one day.

So now, when I walk down the street or sit on the train or just lie in bed, I mostly think about how none of it matters without her here. In fact, I’m almost certain it must have never mattered at all. Because if there was any justice or karma or meaning in the world, she’d still be in it.