Reflections on the Death of a Loved One.

Many friends have remarked to me that maybe I dwell a little too much on my loss of Margaret and they encourage me to get on with my life, “Margaret wouldn't want you to be this way“. I find it difficult to dismiss her that easily. You would have to be me to understand. 

Here follows an excerpt from one of Shree Rajneesh’s (Osho’s) discourses on how we process the death of someone close that may help:

“A death occurs in the neighborhood, but it does not touch people’s hearts. People simply say, ‘The poor man died’. But we are unable to brush it away like this when it occurs in our own homes. Then it affects us, because when a death occurs in our homes, when one of ‘our own’ dies, we also die, a part of our own selves dies. We had an investment in this person who has died; we used to get something from this person’s life. This person was occupying a certain corner of our hearts.

So when a wife dies it is not just the wife who dies. Something in the husband dies too. The truth is that the husband came into being when the wife came into being. Before that there was not a husband or a wife. When a child dies, something in the mother also dies. We are connected with the one we call ours. When he or she dies, we also die.

Where would we be if all our own people die? Our ‘I’ is nothing but a name of a sum total of what we call ‘our own people’. What we call ’I’ is the name for all the accumulations of ‘mine’. If all those who are ‘mine’ are to leave, then I will be no more, then I cannot remain. This ‘I’ of mine is attached partly to my father, partly to my mother, partly to my son, partly to my daughter, partly to my friends ….. to all these people.

What is even more surprising is that this ‘I’ is not only attached to those we call our own, but it is also attached to those we consider outsiders or ‘not-mine’. Although this attachment is outside our circle, nonetheless it is there. Hence, when my enemy dies, I also die a little, since I will not be able to be exactly the same as I was while my enemy was alive. Even my enemy has been contributing something to my life. He may have been an enemy but he was ‘my’ enemy.  My ‘I’ was related to him too: without him I will be incomplete.

What would be the point of continuing to live when all ‘my very own’ are dead? Even if I were to gain everything, it would be worthless if none of ‘mine’ were alive. This is worth considering more deeply. Whatsoever we accumulate is less for ourselves than it is for those we call “our very own’. The house we build is less for ourselves than it is for those ‘very own’ who will live in it, for those ‘very own’ who will admire and praise it – and also for our ‘very own’ and ‘others’ who will become full of envy and will burn with jealousy. Even if the most beautiful mansion on earth is mine but none of my ‘very own people’ are around to see it – either as friends or as enemies - I will suddenly find the mansion is worth no more than a hut.

Everything becomes meaningless when you are alone.” *

* And I would add, not just alone, but when the most cherished people in your life have died, those you turn to for emotional and physical sustenance, one experiences the ultimate loss, hence my feelings that my life has no purpose without Margaret. The “I” that I once perceived as myself is now only a memory, an illusion just like Margaret who no longer physically exists. That “I’ that once was ‘me’ died with Margaret and her death has left me a mostly empty shell because she occupied such a large part of my heart. That’s why I have told my children that I feel I am speaking to them from beyond the grave.

And in Matthew Alpert’s book,”The God Part of the Brain”, Alpert states:

The threat of death lurks around every corner, in every breath, shadow, meal and stranger. And though we don’t know from where it will come, we are condemned to recognize that it inevitably will.

In addition to this, almost as potent as our fear of personal death (My note: I’d say more potent if you truly love someone) is the fear of losing those we love. As a social organism, we are dependent on others for our physical as well as emotional survival. Again and again studies show the debilitating effect of isolation in humans. Without love we are generally pained beings. For this reason, we place nearly the same - if not more – value on the lives of those to whom we are emotionally attached as we do on our own. Consequently, we live in constant fear of not just losing our own lives but of losing the lives of those we cherish and love.

To this I add – Amen.

I lived that fear and I would occasionally mention it to Margaret. I would say, “Margaret, if you were to die I don’t know how I could go on without you”, to which she would always reply, “Gary, you would do fine”. Margaret was so wise that most of the time you could trust everything she said to be right. But in this case she was wrong - and I think she knew it.  

The Last Surge of Life

When my father-in-law, Ernie Skaggs, died a number of years ago we were with him at the hospital. As fate would have it my father was in the same hospital at the same time one floor above. My father, Lynn, had suffered a stroke and heart attack and wasn't expected to live. Ernie was suffering from liver disease and was in for treatment. 

My father had been in the hospital for some time and I had been visiting him for two successive weekends driving the six hours from Tennessee to Illinois on Friday evenings and the six hours back on Sunday evenings. My brother called early Friday morning and said that dad wasn’t expected to last the night so we had better come quickly. Margaret and I loaded our car, chose clothing to wear to my father’s funeral, and with our kids in the back we headed for Illinois with dread in our hearts.

When I arrived early that afternoon the doctors gathered us together and told us my father's blood pressure and oxygen levels were dangerously low and he was worsening. They strongly pressured us to agree to put him back on the respirator telling us he would die shortly without it. Seeing our reluctance they told us if we refused that his death would be on our heads because he would surely die without life support. We refused to acquiesce. Just the weekend before, after coming off the respirator, my dad had made me promise at his bedside that we not allow him to be put back on the respirator for any reason. He was adamant. We honored my dad’s request and waited at his bedside for him to pass.

On the other hand, my father-in-law, who was suffering from liver disease, had improved dramatically over the previous two days and was to be released the next morning. He was laughing and cheerful that evening; cheered by a surge in energy and spirit and anxious to be released. My wife Margaret and the kids went home with her mother that night and my mother and I spent the night in the critical care unit with my father, my mother in a recliner and me on the floor.

The next morning I left my father’s bedside to visit Margaret's father Ernie and was shocked to see him lying in bed, pale and ashen-faced, hooked up to a bag of fluid and medicines. “What happened”, I asked, not believing what I was seeing. “I don’t know”, he weakly moaned back to me with a look of despair on his face.

Ironically, Ernie died early that afternoon with us at his side. The funeral clothes we brought to attend my father's funeral were worn for Margaret's father's funeral instead. My father on the other hand miraculously improved and left the hospital the following week. He regained his health and lived almost four more years. He eventually died of a heart attack while on his feet following my mother across a parking lot. He died instantly the way most of us would like our lives to end and not on a respirator in a hospital as he might surely had if we had agreed to put him back on life support.

Medical history fully acknowledges that more often than not there is a notable surge of energy and spirit that precedes death, sometimes by minutes, or by hours or perhaps by a few days. Astronomers know the same is true of stars. Right before a star dies it expands and blazes with a surge of energy. Also, volcanoes, storms, and perhaps almost all life-forms release a surge of energy just before they die, perhaps as a sense of that impending death and a last great effort to fight it off – or perhaps just to go out with a bang. Just as we witness a candle’s burning, if allowed to pass naturally, the flame of life glows brightly one last time before it flickers and dies. 

Margaret left me the same way. Lying there in the IC unit she grew restless as she was just waking from surgery to repair a ruptured aneurysm. She was bending her legs moving them up and down and she suddenly awoke. I was standing next to her and her eyes opened and darted to find mine. She tried to raise her hand which was tied down. A respirator kept her from speaking. With one last effort she stared into my eyes as I spoke to her and then she closed her eyes and slipped into a coma, never to open her eyes again. One last flicker of life and she was gone. Our eyes holding each other for one last moment is a bitter-sweet memory that breaks my heart each time it finds its way into my thoughts. It hurts worse than anything I've ever experienced but at the same time it's one of the most treasured moments of my life. She was able to muster enough energy to say goodbye. I would give my life a hundred times over just to look into those eyes once more and feel her touch.