A Parade of Death and Voices

It seems our life together has been one prep for a death and funeral after another.  We began with an illness and death.  As Brian's Father wasted away from cancer, we became friends.  My heart went out to this man who soon would lose his Father, mine having been gone for 16  years.  In the five years Brian and I have known each other, he has lost a Father, Step-Father, Brother, Mother and a Dear Friend.  I have lost a Cousin, Great-Aunt and an Uncle.  We have not had 12 months in a row without a death.  We're averaging a death every 5.4 months.

It seems just as we are taking a breath, learning to live with the void that has just been created, the whirlwind whips into our home, scattering thoughts of safety and sanity and leaving more despair in it's wake than the last time.  We take a collective family deep breath and brace our shoulders to walk into the storm again.  Grim, determined, holding on to each other tighter each time.

Each night I go to bed, wondering how I will sleep, how will Brian sleep, how will Mikhail sleep?  Will there be nightmares, busy minds fighting against repose, restless bodies trying to will and force cancer away from someone we love or sweet exhaustion?  I never know what the night will hold.

Well, I know what some of the night will hold.  The voices.  Quiet, determined, angry, laughing, sad, regretful, hopeful, encouraging, despondent, lost, aware, confused, enlightened, brilliant voices.  They speak to me from within my heart.  Some of them I did not know in life at all but through stories, others I could look on their face and know what they were thinking.  No matter who they were to me in life, I can hear them when they are gone.  Whispering to my mind, soothing my soul.  They speak to me.  Every morning I wake a little stronger, knowing that they will be there counseling me, guiding me, never leaving me, I have only to listen for them and they will be there.

5 years of death and I finally get it.  The platitudes we pass to each other to offer comfort at a loss,  they have meaning.  There is a reason we all say all the same things over and over, death after death. "We never really lose our loved ones, they live on in our hearts."  And they do.  If only we will listen for them.  I have learned to listen.  To quiet my mind and soul, to hear what they would say to me.  Some of the voices that were harsh and unforgiving in life, I hear them soften as they leave this world and realize some things were just not that important and others should have been more so.  Egos, the need to prove you're right, an obligation to criticize, a neediness that could never be satisfied, a desire to always seemed strong and above everything, prioritizing outside of family and friends, none of them important in the end.

When the realization hit that one day, in the not too distant future, my Daddy would be gone and he was handling it with a Spockian sense of inevitability, I was enraged.  I yelled at him, how could he so easily discuss deserting me?  What about when I needed advice or just wanted to talk to him?  How could he treat that with so little concern and sensitivity?  What he said to me then, it has taken me 21 years to truly hear.  "Kitten, you'll always know what I would say because you know me."  

21 years later, I see how right he was, how prophetic.  We never really lose them.  Their voices live in our hearts and sing to our souls.  I've watched my husband struggle with each loss, wondering if he was a disappointment to each loved one gone, is he disappointing them now, are they proud, angry?  Wondering what they would say to him.  Each day I remind him that the only thing they could leave behind truly was the love they had.  I remind him that's all any of us can leave behind, it's the only thing we would choose to leave behind, our love.  And I remind myself.  I remind him that life, no matter how long you have, is too short for anger and resentment.  It's the thing those traveling their last days always say.  If we listen to our loved ones while they are here, we will always hear them, they will never leave us and we will always know what they would say.