Death and all her relatives

Death has been on my mind, and I haven't even been riding my motorcycle lately. My first and foremost sad news is that my close female relative died suddenly about three and a half weeks ago. My father and I just finished a weekend visit. I arrived on a Friday night. By Saturday afternoon, we drove the sixty miles to her nursing home and set up residence in the facility's guest cottage. My father had not seen her since before Christmas and he spent all the time he could spare sitting in her room and chatting with her. She had had a rough winter, with many changes, a loss of freedom and no very clear memory of why she had lost her apartment and was strong-armed into a one-bedroom apartment without so much as a refrigerator or even a door that locks. While my father and I read or worked crossword puzzles or asked her about the old birthday book we found, she lay on her bed in a fetal position sleeping. On Sunday, we spent time the same way, except that she made to the church service down the hall with us. On Monday, she napped less and even wanted me to wander the halls with her to see he she knew who might be visiting their relatives in the parlor. I went with her and we found a lady wearing green for St. Patrick's day who smiled at her. My aunt said “Hello. I saw you smiling at me, so I we must know each other.” I found it very sweet of her to think that people who smile at her are her friends and to have every expectation that she would find a friend where ever she goes.
We said good-bye Monday morning. We spoke by phone Monday evening. By dawn Tuesday morning, she was dead.
She fell during the night on Monday, hit her head against the concrete floor covered with a thin carpet and no padding, and died of a cerebral hemorrhage seven hours later. The blood-thinners that kept her blood from clotting in the veins in her head caused the blood to fill her brain cavity very quickly once it started seeping out there. Instead of going to the airport, I went to the hospital and the funeral home that day, St. Patrick's day.
Several weeks before my close relative died, I found that my godson, who I had not seen since 1984, died in a fire as a teenager, ten years ago.
Last night, I saw Leonard Cohen perform in concert. To say that death is a theme in his songs is an understatement. Many of his songs and poems address death and loss in at least some form. One of his songs, “Who By Fire?” is a variation of a prayer recited on the Rosh Hashanah, the Day of Atonement. It lists the various circumstances around which a person can die. As I sat not too far from the stage, enjoying Leonard's gravel-voice and the bright blue glow of the theater's argon lights, when the litany of fates overcame me and I wept right there for the first time that night.
Today, we went to the Page Museum to pay tribute to the animals that had died in the La Brea tar pits. Oddly, no raccoon bones have been found, but the tar pits were especially dangerous for the scavenging dire wolf. The wolves, seeing easy prey in the pit, would attack and become victims themselves. One wall of the museum was lined with hundreds of skulls from all the dire wolves who had died and been found millennia later. The skulls, mounted backlit in orange, all faced the same way as if the wolves saluted death and reported for reassignment.
Only one person so far has been found in the pits, a woman, who received only a couple mentions in the museum. She found herself stuck and sinking, waiting to die. The pits are still there, all potentially deadly, but their threats mitigated by eight-foot iron fences. We all can and do anticipate our own deaths, but we do not feel the weight of our fate until we are mired in the circumstance we feel will be fatal and that uncertainty saves us. It leaves us space for our tears, our hope, and our joy and sadness.

Comments

[Modesta]

Well written article.