Four months after Shayna’s passing, I’m still obsessed with death and I’m sure I will be for as long as I am alive. My friends both on Facebook and real life I think are getting pretty sick of it though. I’m back to my political posting on Facebook which can draw over a hundred comments on a really controversial topic, but the blog posts are drawing fewer and fewer comments. Friends who were checking in on me daily are, naturally, fading away. People who were calling frequently are, naturally, calling less. Some of that is natural. We’re not that close to people where we call every day (most of us anyway), but I think part of it is people are sick of hearing about death.
Death is a topic that makes us uncomfortable. No one wants to face the fact that we were born into a world where death is going to touch us one way or the other. Either we die or someone we love dies. When you got married you said “Until death do us part.”, but most of us repeat those words mindlessly, not thinking we are committing to mourn or to be mourned. It can be no other way. We all die. I’m reminded of a line from the Game of Thrones where Arya’s sword teacher asks her “What do we say when Death comes for us?” and the answer is “Not today.”. We all want to believe that. Death is not today. So, I don’t have to think about it today. But, in the back of our minds, we know it is some day. As long as it’s not today, I don’t have to think about it though. So, please don’t remind me.
I don’t have that luxury anymore. The death of a grandparent or a parent you can set aside for a while. An uncle, a friend. I’ve lost them. You mourn for aa while then you move on. You go from thinking about them all day every day to just every day to every few days to every few months. Yeah, these things happen. We can take that. The death of your child though. Man, that changes you, fundamentally, deeply and forever. The person I was on June 23rd is forever gone. Dead. When Shayna died that person died. A new person has been reborn and is in development freshly out of the womb. And this guy is probably not a lot of fun to be around. That’s OK. I have a job to do. I guess I signed up for this. I don’t remember, it was before I was born.
