My Visit Home-pt. 1: Morbid

I was recently home in Canada for ten days, from the 20th until the 30th of November. The reason for this journey wasn't a particularly cheery one: my grandmother (Dorothy James, nee Anderson) died in late November. That being said, it isn't as bad as it would seem, from that initial statement. This post deal with this rather morbid aspect of my trip.

Death is a funny thing, really. It's arguably the only thing that every person has in common, regardless of race, age, and any other circumstances. We will all die. It is inescapable, yet we fear it like almost nothing else. And it's always assumed to be a major tragedy. I understand why, but I'm not sure that this is either the healthiest approach, nor the most realistic.

In today's society, we have idealised life above and beyond everything else. Medical science seeks, at the expense of all else, to preserve and extend life. There is in our culture an inimitable fear of death. This is to be expected-death, aside from being the one thing we have in common, is also the one thing we can never truly understand. Simply put, nobody who's been properly dead (not just mostly-dead like Wesley in The Princess Bride) has ever been able to report back on what it's like. I'm excluding seances and Ouija boards here, and only counting real-world situations and occurrences.

So we fear death. And, as a natural consequence, we try to extend life, at all costs. But sometimes I think this goes to far; I think we have enshrined the concept of quantity of life, at the expense of quality of life. We have nursing homes full of people in pain, losing their minds, lonely and confused. Yet, we do everything possible to make sure they continue in this situation as long as possible. I'm not convinced this is the right move, for anyone concerned. The people themselves are often so confused, it's probably quite easy for them; those not actively in pain are probably so blissfully unaware of their surroundings that it's not a big deal for them either way. But I still have to wonder what kind of a life that is. And their families and friends bear an even bigger brunt of this deterioration. They are forced to witness their loved ones-previously vital, gregarious and full of life-descend into a shell of their formers selves-tired, confused and often without the dignity they so rightly deserve. I know that there's a large part of me that wishes my last memories of my grandmother's life weren't of her confined to bed, fully unaware of who she was, who we were or what was going on.

An extension to this is funeral services. I don't like morose, morbid, depressing funeral services. It is always a loss when someone you love dies. But no amount of crying will ever change that. Mourning is natural, and should occur. But I think that memorial services and funerals should be a celebration of life. Instead of looking at what you've lost, look at the time you had together. Don't mourn that this person is no longer with you-celebrate the years you had together. I've been to very few memorial services, but the ones I like are those where you tell stories about the deceased; you laugh, you cry a little, but in the end, you realise how truly blessed you were for the time you had together. These are beautiful occasions and are, to me, what all memorials should be like. Everyone touches the lives of others in different; my experience of my grandmother was very different from my father's, which was very different from my mother's, and so on. And it's wonderful to get to hear about all these different people whose lives are better for having known my grandmother.

I'm not sad that my grandmother passed away. I'm sad that she's no longer in my life; I'm sad that she won't see me get my Ph.D., will never be able to attend my wedding (if and when I get married), and that I won't get to hear her laugh any more, or chat with her over tea. But I'm not sad she died. My grandmother was 93 years old; she lived a long life, she lived a good life and she went peacefully in her sleep. We could all do a lot worse.

I have to remind myself that some birds aren't meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright. And when they fly away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up does rejoice. Still, the place you live in is that much more drab and empty that they're gone.

-The Shawkshank Redemption

See part two...