‘There is nothing to do but wait and I see that you know how hard this is. You have seen this many times.’
When my father arrives in the hospice, there is a flurry of activity. Drug charts are checked, vital signs are tested. We all know he has come here to die, but still the idea is that something might be fixed, at least temporarily, and the young doctor and nurses on duty that evening have an air of “sorting things out”. It is a relief to get here; they know what to do. The flat has become a claustrophobic, smelly and unmanageable place for my mother to care for Dad.
The next day, you slide into the room like an elegant cat – without an entourage of junior doctors, a computer on wheels or a stethoscope slung around your neck. You lean over my sleeping father and take him in without saying anything, and then turn to my mother with a smile that is at once kind and serious.
You take us to a side room and tell us that he is nearly finished with his body now, that it is normal and natural and that there is nothing to be done except to keep him comfortable. You say it clearly and calmly, making eye contact with my mother. It is a beautiful day, and you suggest we take a walk and look at the sky, the daffodils, the trees beginning to bud. “He will be with you in these things,” you say, entirely without sentimentality. “It is time to let him go.”
For the first time in the entire period of my father’s cancer, my mother cries. Woman to woman, you look at her and she feels your genuine solidarity. It is a turning point, and from then on my mother prepares to cut free from her husband of more than 55 years.
Over the next days, when on duty, you appear quietly in the room with an aura of respect for the sacred space we have created with flowers, cards and drawings by grandchildren. You never talk loudly to my father as if he is deaf or stupid. You also never adopt the drippy, concerned tone often used by professionals with the ill or grieving. Your gaze is clear and direct, as is the information you give us. Dad is taking his time, he has things to say and his body is not quite ready to close down.
“This is not a medical condition we can treat, or something I can help with drugs or charts,” you say, as I pack away my violin after playing the Scottish folk tunes of Dad’s childhood to him. “This,” she gestures to my son sitting on the bed, the guitar lying on the chair, Mum holding Dad’s hand. “This is all that’s important now.”
There is nothing to do but wait, and I see from your experience and wisdom that you know how hard this is – this endless waiting, which is pregnant with ambivalence. You have seen this many times before.
Thank you for what Cicely Saunders (the founder of the modern palliative care movement) called the “depth of time” you have given to us. Perhaps you spent no more minutes with my dad than any of the other professionals. Perhaps you even spent less time, as you didn’t bother much with symptoms or drugs and interventions that we could all see were pointless. But you met my dying father, my mother and me with honesty, dignity and sincerity, and this is what we will remember and treasure.
Knitting may be great for mental health but it also boasts environmental benefits, according to a textile manufacturer from Yorkshire.
Natural Legacy, a family-run firm based near Pudsey, Leeds, have come up with the innovative idea of creating sustainable coffins, out of wool.
The fully biodegradable resting places are made from 100 per cent pure British wool and began being made in 2009, the Yorkshire Evening Post reports.
After starting in 2009 it now sells around 120 a month, and forecasts to increase to 200 monthly orders by the end of 2013.
Each coffin is handmade from three fleeces, costing approximately £600 to buy and according to quality director, Rachel Hainsworth, the innovative idea is proving popular.
“It is such a unique product,” she told the newspaper. However, “the rapid growth in sales indicates that people like the idea of having a stylish, aesthetically pleasing woollen coffin for their loved ones”.
The gentleness of the natural wool is also “a real comfort to families,” Ms Hainsworth added, saying “people literally like to stroke it when they go up to the coffin to pay their respects and I think families like the fact that it is tactile and warm, it is like their loved ones are wrapped in a blanket”.
Initially the range was developed by a marketing student who came across an odd fact while looking at old records.
An Act of Parliament from 1667 decreed that everyone had to be buried in a woollen shroud to support the woollen textile industry, an idea which proved to be the inspiration behind the firm’s designs.
The coffins are lined with organic cotton and then reinforced with recycled cardboard, as well as jute edges, leaving plenty of space for personal name plate embroidery.
As well as being environmentally-friendly these coffins are made from British wool, using British workers, helping to support the UK wool industry.
When my Aunt Esther died in the summer of 2011, we knew we’d have to deal with her apartment—specifically, the floor-to-ceiling Amazon.com boxes that filled every room.
The job of cleaning fell to my brother, who was living nearby at the time. He spent months repackaging unused items, all the while reporting back on the tragedy of all this stuff. Why did she need hundreds of pocket calculators? Or dozens of books on beating the odds at the casino?
Why, indeed?
The first Amazon review I encountered by Patricia “A Reader” was in 2007. It was an earnest, paragraphs-long piece about an old picture book. I was reading the review because that very book had just been gifted to my daughters by Aunt Esther. It took a few reads before I realized that Patricia and Aunt Esther were one and the same, but I kept my discovery to myself, filing it away as just one more strange fact about her.
It was only after her death that it became clear my quirky, shut-in aunt had been writing long-form Amazon reviews of everything from books, to pocket calculators, to ice cube trays, to boxes of sugar. And I became her most dedicated reader.
Here is the opening to a 2007 review by Patricia for a one-handed can opener—an item that has sadly long since been off the market:
I presently live in a “no-pets” building – which has its advantages and disadvantages. The “One Touch Can Opener” –- though obviously an inanimate object – can easily be a “pet-substitute”, as well as an excellent can opener! For, as it zips around your can, opening it, it makes a nice little “wiggle motion”….almost like a fish in the water!
The title of this review is:
“A N D…..I T….O P E N S…..C A N S,…..T O O !,”
Certain obsessions become clear when scanning through the more than 700 reviews posted by Patricia between 2004 and 2011. Among them: Alien Nation (the TV show, “NOT the film”); coasters and mugs featuring the British royal family; books on beating roulette in the casinos by use of pocket calculators; pocket calculators; canned fish; and candy bars. It also seems Patricia was either unable or unwilling to purchase many of the items she was reviewing, as evidenced by this late-career review of the film “Lesbian Vampires”:
This movie is full of blood, gore, and lust. (Not that I have seen it…I’ve read other people’s reviews). It has only one redeeming value, in that, (by and large), it must usually keep its viewers inside either their homes or their friends homes….and OFF THE STREETS! …I have a very strong suspicion that it insults both REAL lesbians, and, (IF they exist), real vampires as well.
But Patricia’s crowning moment as a reviewer was when she stumbled across a novelty item in the form of a can of Unicorn Meat. I can only imagine she came to the item while searching Amazon for other actual canned meats. Patricia is both outraged and disgusted by this product, and does not hold back, giving it two stars out of five:
Now, I am definitely NOT a vegetarian. Yes, I am a proud and happy omnivore, (eating non-meat products as well as meat), and even eat……VEAL!
However, I draw the line at Unicorn meat! These rare and beautiful creatures, if they indeed do exist, should NOT be killed and /or eaten! At least, not till we have a good, authenticated herd of 1,000 or so unicorns around! And if this is only a toy, it is still teaching children, (and adults), a very bad lesson.
There is considerable debate in the three pages of comments on this particular review as to whether Patricia is writing a “spoof” review. Patricia baffles her detractors, and in the end she pulls rank on them all.
“you can’t write over 600 reviews for Amazon, and over three thousand musical pieces — all, alas, presently unpublished — without being sensitive”
The tone of Patricia’s reviews is always hopeful, and thoughtful. For me, this is a window into Aunt Esther’s world, one that I was rarely privy to in our brief personal interactions. In her first review, Patricia discusses her sometimes fraught relationship with her more worldly sister, my mother, by celebrating their shared love for a book on class and status. Elsewhere, she discusses her childhood, her loneliness, and her desire to be useful, to be needed.
Yes, she was searching the endless options available on Amazon.com for the perfect pocket calculator. But I think she was searching also for the sake of sharing her discoveries with her adoring readers, even if that group was only just me.
In the months after she died, I read and reread each of Patricia’s reviews. Only then was I able to do the thing I wished I had known to do when she was alive. “Was this review helpful to you?” Amazon asked me at the end. Yes. Yes. Yes.
The writer Anita Brookner, who has died at the age of 87, requested that no funeral be held after her death. How common is this and what does it mean for friends and family?
When someone dies, the UK government’s advice is given in three simple steps. First, get a death certificate from a GP or hospital doctor. Second, register the death. Third, arrange the funeral.
But the writer Anita Brookner, best known for her 1984 Booker Prize-winning novel Hotel du Lac, requested that step three didn’t happen in her case, her death notice in the Times saying: “At Anita’s request there will be no funeral.”
This type of ending, where a coffin goes straight from the place of death to the cremator, where it is burned, is known as a “direct cremation”.
Catherine Powell, customer experience director at Pure Cremation, which offers services for England and Wales, estimates that 2,000 people a year are now making this choice.
The most common reason, she adds, is to enable a more “celebratory” event, such as a summer beach party or function at a golf club, to take place weeks or months later. However, some choose it for financial reasons – a direct cremation, including transport and coffin, costs just over £1,000, whereas an average funeral costs £3,600, according to research by Bath University’s Institute for Policy Research.
A direct cremation involves a company moving the body from a hospital, hospice or home to the crematorium. As with a conventional funeral, the coffin travels along the aisle of the chapel to the cremator, but no ceremony takes place.
However, families and friends can come to watch the coffin’s procession. They can touch it and request music to be played. One woman who attended alone “sang her heart out”, says Powell, while the procession of one man’s body was accompanied by his two daughters performing “air guitar”. But there is no eulogy or other ceremonial aspect.
Some Christians have used the direct cremation service, in one case with friends of the deceased reciting scripture as the coffin passed through the crematorium. A religious memorial service took place months later.
UK funerals, in which mourners traditionally have worn black, have become less conventional. In some cases there is now a party theme, with attendees dressing up as, among other things, clowns, Vikings and Dr Who characters. Some might regard this as flippant behaviour, but supporters say they involve thoughtful, personalised ceremony – a tribute and a send-off.
The US-based website What’s Your Grief offers “guilt-free alternatives” to funerals. These include erecting a “shrine” – a collection of photographs and mementos – in the home, holding birthday or anniversary memorials, planting a tree and setting up a memorial book. Of course, all of these can, and often do, happen if the deceased has a funeral too.
“What we offer isn’t a cheap funeral – it’s a simple cremation,” says Powell. “That’s not right for everybody, but it allows the later remembrance to be more personalised and planned. Often there’s no time for some relatives and friends to get to funerals, so it gives them a chance to attend a memorial when one takes place at a better time. It offers more flexibility.
“The body is the part of the funeral process that people find most difficult to deal with. This takes away that worry for people.”
A central question is whether seeing the body (in an open casket) or at least having it in the same room as the mourners is important. In recent years it’s become more common to refer to a corpse as “just a shell”, wrote William Hoy, clinical professor of medical humanities at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, but he questioned how widely this is actually believed.
He cited the concept of “liminality”, described by the early-20th Century anthropologist Arnold van Gennep – that the immediate period following physical death is a “threshold” in which people aren’t sure whether to describe them as dead or alive.
“The bereaved need support in two months, to be sure,” Hoy wrote, “but they most certainly need the support of personally meaningful ceremonies in the early days after death.”
There are no centrally held figures on funeral – or non-funeral – types in the UK, but the National Association of Funeral Directors estimates that direct cremations and the rarer burials without ceremonies follow less than 3% of the 480,000 or so annual deaths.
“This is largely because, despite high-profile examples such Anita Brookner and David Bowie, as a society we generally view the act of a committing a body to the ground or to the flames as a central part of the funeral service,” a spokeswoman says.
She acknowledges that those who opt out of funerals usually do so for personal rather than financial reasons. “While a funeral can be extremely distressing,” she says, “it can also be an important part of the grieving process for those left behind and so providing an option to allow people to come together in another way might be an important consideration in the planning process. ”
Brookner, who nursed her own mother until her death in 1969, said she had read the Bible as a child but had decided there would be “a lot of questions and no answers”. She described herself as a “pagan” and supported the use of euthanasia.
The author, who taught at London’s Courtauld Institute of Art and was the first woman to hold the Slade Professorship of Fine Art at Cambridge University before becoming an author, never married or had children.
It’s not been revealed whether she planned for her friends and family, and many thousands of fans, to hold a celebration of her life at a later date.
Your death. It’s bad for you, but could be worse for the planet. Fear not, though, doomed mortal – from green burial to self-composting, here are eight ways to straighten up and die right
By Alison Maney
You hear it all the time: “Your lifestyle affects the environment.” But do you ever consider how your death will impact the world after you’re gone?
Recently the idea of a green burial took a turn for the practical/macabre, depending on your point of view, with the excitement around the Capsula Mundi death pods – bulbous bodybags inside which your earthly remains can quietly decompose into earthy tree food:
Green burial inside Capsula Mundi burial pods: what sap!
Which is all part of a growing recognition that traditional burials aren’t very eco-friendly. Think about it: we fill a corpse with potentially toxic embalming liquid (formaldehyde, a chemical commonly used in embalming fluid, is sometimes classified as a carcinogen), put it in a mahogany box that’s been transported and harvested from the tropics, and allow nothing but grass to grow over the burial site for hundreds of years.
Or you opt for cremation, which is arguably worse – burning a body necessitates massive amounts of gas and electricity (about the same amount you would normally use in a month, according to some figures) and releases greenhouse gases and mercury (!) into the air.
“If you assumed your late Aunt Bertha could no longer expand her carbon footprint, you’re sadly mistaken”
Yes, if you assumed your late Aunt Bertha could no longer expand her carbon footprint, you’re sadly mistaken – the deceased continue to have an environmental impact beyond the grave.
But do not despair, environmentally conscious future-corpses. You’re not doomed to an afterlife of eco-unfriendliness. If you’re dead serious about turning your ultimate demise into your ultimate act of kindness, then read on, because we’ve put together a plethora of green burial options and eco-positive posthumous possibilities for you to peruse.
1. Freeze-dry your remains
“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” the saying goes. But what kind of dust? How about millimetre-sized freeze-dried particles? The process of promession, developed in 1997 by biologist Susanne Wiigh-Mäsak, does just that. The process is surprisingly gentle: your corpse is frozen at -18° C (0.4° F) and placed in a vat of liquid nitrogen. Slight vibrations break up the body and a vacuum chamber evaporates the liquid, transforming your earthly remains into a dry powder. A bit less traumatic than having your body incinerated, no?
Why is this so good for the environment? Unlike cremation, the process doesn’t release harmful gas into the air and helps break the body down more quickly once it’s buried (usually in a corn starch coffin, set in a shallow grave). After 6 to 12 months, the body and its coffin will have completely composted into the soil, creating fertile ground for new life. Aw!
2. From grief to reef – rebuild coral with your corpse
Reef Balls
If you really want to be cremated, you can still do some good with your dust. Consider resting in a watery grave while helping the rebuilding of coral reefs and the creation of habitats for fast-dwindling marine life. Eternal Reefs will mix your ashes into environmentally safe concrete that will be used to create a Reef Ball, a porous, pod-like structure specifically designed to mimic a natural reef and provide a habitat for microorganisms, animals and plants.
An alternative to your more traditional urn, Reef Balls can be adorned with a small plaque and marked with handprints and messages from your loved ones, before being dropped into the sea. Family members and friends can boat out to your final resting place for a memorial ceremony. Gives the term ‘life after death’ a whole new meaning, doesn’t it?
3. Literally become a tree
A Bios urn
Another option if you feel you simply must be cremated? Become a tree. The Bios Urn is essentially a cone that contains soil, your ashes and a tree seed of your choosing. The urn itself is biodegradable, so you just plant the whole shebang in the ground and watch a sapling spring from what used to be your grandfather. It’s a touching way to keep the dearly departed in the family (unless there’s a termite infestation – sorry, grandpa) and helps combat the world’s abysmal deforestation statistics – up to 58 thousand square miles of forest per year.
So, what kind of tree do you want to be? The website offers maple, pine, ginkgo, beech and ash seeds, plus the option to contribute your own preferred seed if none of those tickle your branches.
4. Use a biodegradable coffin
A wicker coffin
When it comes to biodegradable coffins, the ultimate in green burial funeral accessories, you have plenty of choices. Fancy a colourful, personalised cardboard coffin that’s free of metal fixings and made from recycled materials? You got it. Prefer something earthy, pretty and endearingly similar to a picnic hamper, like a wicker coffin? No problem. How about a coffin made out of cotton and banana leaves? Done.
Unlike mahogany coffins, biodegradable coffins are usually built locally and aren’t treated or covered in lacquer. That cuts down on emissions used to transport the coffins and the time it takes for the coffin to disintegrate once in the ground.
Even better news? Biodegradable coffins tend to be cheaper than their more traditional tropical hardwood counterparts. With funerals typically costing around £3,700 (around $5,277) in the UK and over $7,000 (£4,909) in the US, your surviving family members will definitely thank you.
5. Get embalmed with essential oils
Essential oils
Sure, formaldehyde is great for preserving your flesh (or shark flesh if you’re Damian Hirst) so that you look your best at your funeral, but this popular embalming ingredient is also a toxic chemical and – surprisingly enough – is therefore rife with problems. It’s linked to cancer and has also recently been linked to ALS (a neurodegenerative disease), putting embalmers at risk. And although there haven’t been any conclusive studies measuring the environmental impact of embalming liquid (and, in all fairness, the compound typically breaks down quickly in the soil), some people have argued that the liquid could somehow make its way into our drinking water.
Instead of risking the life of your future funeral director, or the plant and animal life that will live in and around your grave, why not get yourself embalmed with non-toxic essential oils? Biodegradable embalming alternatives still disinfect, deodorize and preserve – though perhaps not for as long. Still, the sooner your body starts helping nourish new life in the soil the better, right?
6. Have a woodland burial
Delliefure Natural Burial Ground
Woodland burials, also known as natural or green burials, have surged in popularity over the past few years. And why wouldn’t they? Traditional cemeteries are sad and macabre, not to mention covered in herbicides and manicured regularly with petrol lawnmowers. Instead, why not let local plant and animal life flourish around your former earthly vessel? Sounds like a much cheerier way to spend the afterlife.
A word to the wise: natural burial grounds can vary widely. Some are very strict about what you can put in the ground – no embalmed bodies, no stone memorials, no non-biodegradable coffins – while others are less stringent. Some plant a tree over the grave, while others place a wooden plaque (or both). Some are commercial enterprises, while others are non-profit charities.
Though they’re called ‘woodland burials,’ you can find natural burial sites in fields, meadows, woodlands and parks. Some are even adjacent to more traditional cemeteries. Whatever you like, really. But whatever you choose, you’re helping to preserve a green space by using it as your final resting place – after all, no-one wants to build condos over a burial ground.
These types of burials are also usually cheaper than buying a plot in a traditional graveyard. Again, your descendants will thank you.
7. Donate your body to science
Science body dissection model
Have you ever dreamed of helping to find a cure for cancer? Well, that dream doesn’t need to die just because you did. If you donate your body to medical science, you’ll help train future doctors or help scientists perform biomedical research. If you’re nervous about how young doctors will treat your former vessel, never fear – when it comes to human dissection, medicinal ethics generally dictate that medical students must treat your body with dignity. Well, as much dignity as you can grant a body while you’re slicing it open and peeking at its insides.
But be warned – if you’re an organ donor and one or more of your organs are removed post-mortem, most medical schools won’t take your cadaver (yep, that’s your corpse). This is an all-or-nothing sort of deal.
8. Compost yourself
A proposal for the Urban Death Project
This option isn’t available yet, but it might be by the time you meet your maker. Architect Katrina Spade’s Urban Death Project is essentially a dignified way to turn your remains into nutritive compost as quickly as possible.
Spade envisions a three-storey composting column, primed with high-carbon materials and microbes, surrounded by a wide winding ramp. Your family personally wraps your body in a shroud and walks it up to the top of the column, where they say goodbye. Then you’re gently placed in the composting facility, and before you know it, boom – you’re soil.
Of course, you can’t have your body embalmed – quick decomposition is kind of the point here – but the project will happily refrigerate your physical form until the ceremony takes place. If that sounds like your kind of thing, you can even donate to the Urban Death Project.
The thought struck me as I hopped in a cab to LaGuardia: I have a long layover at ORD; I should call Adam and meet up for coffee.
This was a common thought in our friendship, which began on Twitter and was sustained by emails, meandering phone calls, and spontaneous IRL meet ups whenever one of us found ourselves in the other’s city. But this time was different: Adam died two weeks ago. The realization smacked me harder than the February wind, and I found myself struggling to breathe in the back of the taxi.
It is always crushing to lose a friend. Even more so when it is sudden and completely unexpected. How does a completely healthy man in his 20s just not wake up one morning?
But what do you do when the familiar haunts of your friendship are not shared neighborhoods or favorite coffee shops, but social media platforms and overlapping business travel? When time with Adam is short hand for Medium posts and ORD.
Adam first found me on Twitter four years ago. He was a consultant at BCG and I had recently left the company to found my own tech startup. He followed me, tweeted hi, and then wrote a blog post with a huge shout out for my startup. So when he came to New York City later that month and asked to grab coffee, of course I said yes. We talked for more than two hours. The next day I got a package from Amazon for giving him my time, Adam sent me a copy of, a book considered by many founders to be the startup bible. I called him immediately and told him it was the first time in the dozens of the coffee chats I had done that I got more out of the conversation than I gave. (I neglected to tell him I already had two copies of the book.)
Adam gave to everyone in his life. So it was always a pleasure when I could give in return. Whether offering career advice on leaving BCG to move into venture capital, providing feedback on an early draft of a blog post, or making introductions to people I thought he’d love, it always felt like a gift rather than a favor.
We had a few mutual friends, but mostly our relationship was online. So when Adam died suddenly and I couldn’t make it to Chicago for the funeral I found myself at a loss for how to mourn. Technically nothing had changed in my day-to-day life.
On Twitter, I fell down the Internet rabbit hole of seeing of Adam. I liked, retweeted and engaged with complete strangers who were part of his life. It was like attending a 21 century Twitter shiva with casserole in hand, listening as strangers shared stories from college or summer camp.
I realized that in four years of friendship we never took a picture together. I yearned to see his face. His Facebook photo albums did not disappoint, though I noted with some sadness that he had been in NYC just three weeks prior for a wedding, while I’d been at a conference in Charleston. I recalled promises we’d made to meet up next time.
So on this Chicago layover I decided we should have our usual coffee chat, updated to our new circumstances: I’d swing by his grave with some coffee (for me) and flowers (for him).<
I was surprised to find the cemetery was close to O’Hare both because it was incredibly convenient for me but also because I suspect his permanent location near a major airport hub would have delighted him. Upon landing I bought roses from the kiosk at baggage claim and a latte from the airport Starbucks. My driver was annoyed the destination was so close, but I promised him return fare and a generous tip.
When I arrived, it was 4:32 and the cemetery’s gates had been locked at 4:30. Undeterred, I convinced the cabbie to drive around the perimeter until we found an opening in the fence that I could hop over with flowers, coffee, and a cast on one arm. I had to sweet talk a guard who flagged me down. He gave me ten minutes before I had to scram.
By the time I located Adam’s freshly dug grave I was flat out laughing. I’d spilled coffee all over myself and the shenanigans required in order to see him seemed perfectly apropos. The sun was setting quickly.
I told him how I ended up with a cast on one arm and that I was bummed he couldn’t be on my new podcast. I told him about my mission to get computer science into middle school science classrooms and how I was elated to make Gold status on United, which would keep me flying through Chicago for another year.
And then our time was up.
I left him the flowers and promised a longer coffee chat next time I flew through ORD. Heading back to O’Hare I realized my sixth favorite airport for layovers had become a place I looked forward to visiting providing a physical space to honor my online friendship.
The hardest steps I ever took happened 17 years ago, on a hot Thursday afternoon in early September, as I walked away from my son’s grave for the first time. The cemetery smelled of juniper and baked dirt, and as my husband Jason and I stood arm-in-arm, readying ourselves to go, I felt the heat rise up from our ankles. I remember how my body slowly lurched forward as we steered each other toward the car while the hot sun filled the high desert cemetery with light. The wind, an almost constant presence out there, was still as I made my way along, feet dodging big clumps of cheatgrass along the way.
Just two days earlier, we’d sat huddled together at the mortuary, “making arrangements” as they called it, which really meant having to tell someone else about how our lives seemingly and without warning came to a halt as Dylan’s heart stopped beating in utero, a week past his due date. He was stillborn. We’d walked out of the hospital carrying a small purple memory box rather than our 10-pound son.
The day we buried Dylan, there were reminders all around me of how the forces of nature could alter everything. Close to the cemetery, outside our then-home of Bend, Oregon, the elevated peaks of Three Sisters weren’t the gentle fairy tale their name suggested, but the result of plates that had shifted deep in the earth, during a process called subduction. Layers of crust had crashed into each other in a fiery show, perhaps tens of thousands of years ago, creating the widest and longest fault lines in the earth.
Subduction zones are places where great trauma lies. And here I was, all these years after the mountains formed, standing in their shadows in the middle of my own destruction. Enveloped in grief. Loss all around me.
***
Dylan’s in every step I take as I walk away from his grave. He’s all I can think about as I recall the sound that came out of me when I held him for the first time, “Oh!” His still warm body is wrapped in a white cotton blanket and he is wearing a little white onesie with colorful baby-sized hand prints across it. At first glance, his face looks reddish, and I can see that it’s turning blue, but I am not seeing what he is right now. My eyes are soaking up what he should have been. I can see the slight curve of his nose and the shock of dark hair on his head. His eyes are closed, but I know the sky-blue they would otherwise be. He feels light in my arms as I hold him close against my own skin, and as I study him, I am quiet for a while. He’s brand new and so familiar at the same time.
Perhaps there are still other people in the room, or maybe not. Everything and everyone else recedes and all I see is the top of his head and all I hear are words that come pouring out of some deep recess: “I love you so very much. All the way to the moon and back and around the world three hundred and sixty seven times.”
“He’s brand new and so familiar at the same time.”
Some words I say out loud, and some words I don’t need to give voice to. I know that he hears them. It is an ancient wisdom. I tell him about his family and about his sister. I tell him about his room and our cats. I tell him that we all love him. All this time, I am holding my son for the only time we will be together on this big blue planet. I know that this is something I will never get back. I know I have to remember this fiercely. It will all be over far too soon.
Later, when I can reflect on the funeral, I remember our family and friends dropping what they’re doing to stand with us. I remember our daughter sitting on the ground with friends, and their three little heads bowed together while playing with dolls. I remember visually gathering some of their innocence, and it feeling like something close to hope.
As we drive along the dirt road that leads out of the cemetery, I slump down in the seat. By the time we reach the fence, as it will happen every single time, perhaps for the rest of my life, my tears water the desert air. Even as the miles pass and we make our way back to Bend, toward our families and the small gathering at his grandparents’ house, inside my head, I stay in the cemetary where my son is buried, my heart turned inside out.
***
After Dylan’s funeral, we walked back to our apartment and into a life that the three of us no longer fit into. For more than a year, we did our best to go through the motions—we worked, we took short family vacations to the coast and southern Oregon, and we tried to dodge the grief that followed us. Then one day, our 4-year-old daughter asked, “Mom, we used to be so happy, huh?” I nodded. “And then Dylan died and now we’re all so sad.” Six words leapt at me. “When will we be happy again?”
Up until her brother’s death, our lives had been full of quiet walks down a gravel-filled road on the outskirts of Sunriver, where we scouted ospreys, baby hawks, and porcupines. “Look,” I’d say while pointing out some amazing new discovery as we wandered the edge of the Deschutes River. We lived in a sweet log cabin that Jason’s Aunt Jennifer built with her own hands. At night there was a gathering of stars above us as the clearest moon lit up the sky. It was by all accounts an idyllic life and for her, it was a gentle childhood surrounded by a forest of towering but friendly ponderosas and jack pines.
Now I felt like we’d all been catapulted headfirst into the kind of neighborhood you didn’t want to be in after dark. We’d never been here before, didn’t know where we were going, and from what I could see, there weren’t any road maps. Clearly we’d lost our bearings. How could we go from such a well-crafted “before” to such an unimaginable “after”?
“How could we go from such a well-crafted ‘before’ to such an unimaginable ‘after’?”
That fall, my daughter could have entered pre-school, but the thought of sending her away, even just for a few hours, was inconceivable to me. She was my reason for getting up and facing each day. When I wanted to hole up and stay home, she would cajole me to take her to the park so she could swing higher and higher. She pointed to birds and flowers around our neighborhood and made me see beauty again. “Look at that!” she would say. And on the days when I could barely drag myself out of bed in the morning, she would be there. “I love you,” she would remind me. All those lessons I had poured into her, came right back to me when I needed them most.
And all the time, those six words pulled me along, inspiring me to keep trying to find something that resembled happiness in this new form. We moved back to southern Oregon and eventually made our way back to Ashland, where bright red flags lined Main Street and the lush foothills around us offered a sense of peace. I didn’t know it back then, but we were charting our own map, however imperfect. We threw ourselves into volunteer work, discovering in the process that fighting for the rights of low-income people—for better access to health care, economic justice, and independent media that tells the stories behind the issues—felt especially fortifying. We rooted ourselves in southern Oregon until it felt like home. Healing crept up on us, not all at once, but in tiny flashes of kindness. Two more daughters were born and grew.
Above us, the moon kept rising and lighting up the darkness. Seventeen years passed.
***
Here’s the thing that nobody else will tell you about grief. Sometimes, however uncomfortable it is, you just have to sit with sadness for awhile. Sorrow waxes and wanes. You can ground yourself in simple things while time drags along; I recommend the taste of a fresh, ripe peach, listening to the sounds that a hummingbird’s wings make when they visit the feeders, and love notes penned to a small daughter, perhaps added into a brown paper lunch bag with a funny little drawing on one side.
“Sometimes, however uncomfortable it is, you just have to sit with sadness for awhile.”
The sorrow that most of us want to flee helps spit-shine the lens, until we see things more clearly, feel things more deeply. And perhaps, in its wake, grief may even beget a baffling richness.
