It’s a very strange feeling when you’re waiting for someone important in your life to die.
On the one hand, it’s very sad to realize that someone you have loved your entire life will no longer be around.. On the other hand, when you realize that in some ways, they are already gone …
Death isn’t always a tragedy. That’s not to say there aren’t times that just make you want to scream about the unfairness of it all. As I write this, the four people pictured are all still living, but the person behind the camera isn’t. And he wass the youngest of the five of us.
I wrote about him and the tragedy of his death on my previous website, and the effect on three people who mean a lot to me — my sister Hilary and her two sons, Jacob and Nathan — has been terrible. The pain of losing a beloved spouse or a wonderful dad never really goes away. If you’re fortunate, it lessens enough that you can live with it, but you never really forget.
My dad died more than 12 years ago, and while I had something of a mixed history with him, there are things I said to him that when they come to mind, I am horrified that I said them.
That said, any loss that I feel pales beside my mother’s loss. He was her soulmate, the love of her life for more than 50 years. She has now outlived him for more than 12 years, and while the indignities of old age have played havoc with her memory, she has never forgotten him.
I believe that soon — maybe hours or days, certainly less than a week — she will be with him again. I believe there is an afterlife, and I tend to take the Jewish point of view about it. You behave well not to get into Heaven, but because behaving well is the right thing to do. Then maybe there is a Heaven. To me that makes more sense than viewing God as a cosmic Santa Claus, makin’ a list and checkin’ it twice.
I believe my mother will be with my dad.
I believe my sister Hilary will someday be with her Marty.
And I pray that when the time comes, my beloved Nicole and I will find each other on the far side of life.
My mother has had a wonderful life and generations of our family after her will remember her fondly. She had the usual things — career, marriage, children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren — and she got to travel the world with the love of her life.
She had 93 years, a pretty good run.
When she passes, I don’t think I will cry, but I will say goodbye the best way, the way the Spanish say it.
Vaya con dios.