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.