Death Becomes Her

The picture for this blog is one of my youngest child, my Betty, in high school as she pretended to be dead from a car accident. The point of it was to keep kids from drinking and driving. I wrote her obituary, had no contact with her for nearly two days, as she played dead for her school project. It made me sick to my stomach. It made me cry at one point, because she had already lost friends to car accidents. Drinking or not, accidents till happened. I was thinking about the last month, the car wreck that could have easily killed two of my children, the emotional wreckage of what is tearing my family apart, the nervous wreck personality traits we have all shown at one time or another, as if we had taken turns falling apart on schedule, as to not overwhelm the others. I had felt wrecked. I had begun to feel as I did when I was a nurse and it was pneumonia season. The Midwest winters were especially harsh to those who could least afford it's vigor. I would bundle up in the middle of the night, shovel my car out and head off to do the death count for those who didn't survive. I was used to walking in to ambulance drivers carting off another corpse, another mother, father, uncle, aunt, sister and brother. I had gotten used to hearing the death rattle in the distance, as I sipped my coffee, listening to the report of night shift. I had become accustomed to bio-hazard bags filled with pus, blood, mucus and dead tissue, sitting in the hall to be carried to the proper dumping ground. I was used to it all. Very little could penetrate my crusty exterior when it came to certain death. Betty, my youngest recently lost another friend to a car crash. It's not her first. It's not even in the top three, but there it is another obituary of such a young soul lost way too early. She doesn't drive because she lost two friends when they were very young, 16 years old. The car flew, as if with wings into trees. The site is still hard to look at all these years later. I still think about their mothers, just like I am thinking about the mother of the boy who lost his life this past weekend. Betty knows the clock is ticking for and her driver's license. She will have to drive, she will. She will have to trust that she will be able to go from point "A" to point "B" without dying for the privilege. She came to me tonight and we talked briefly about how many of her friends are dying. I looked at my child, so wise beyond her years. Some people face more because they can cope, even when they are certain they can't. My earlier blog said I didn't think God gave us stuff to handle, well, maybe I was wrong. Betty and I have so much in common. Our internal strength helps us cope with extraordinary circumstances, watching people perish right in front of us. We are able to do the right thing by them, their memory, their legacy. Once when I was at an uncle's funeral, I stood before the casket, dry eyed and a relative called me heartless, mumbling it under their breath. It was meant for me to hear, for me to feel guilty for not falling apart, for not grieving publicly. I looked at them and shrugged. I had nothing to say about it. I am not a public griever. I cried softly at home in my pillow where I was safe to do so. At the funeral, I stood stoic, silent, showing nothing on my face. I was blank. I had seen things like this hundreds of times before. He was elderly, sick, gravely ill and not able to recuperate. I wished him peace. Peace is what I think he got when he finally let go. I could say that all my experience with death prepared me for Danny's cancer and inevitable death, but it did not. That was one time when I walked around in complete and utter shock. There had been many times I feared for his life when we were married, but his death is not something I really saw coming. I did what I always do and just stood, stoic, silent, looking upon his face in his casket. I showed nothing. I am certain there were those who thought me heartless, who thought I felt nothing since we were divorced, but the truth was I felt so much my body's only coping skill was to remain upright and keep breathing. I am good at taking care of those who are no longer able to care for themselves. I have personally escorted hundreds of people to the other side, whispering love to them and allowing them to move seamlessly through themselves and onto a place I am without doubt was better than the place they left. I have taken care of young men with very young children die quietly at home, as their wives gently kissed their forehead one last time. I am good at death. I am practiced and capable at letting others go. Betty has been to more than her fair share of funerals. She is good at wearing appropriate clothes, walking silently to the casket and praying over her friends. Suicides, car crashes, other dramatic endings have happened around her in her world, all the while she stands stoic, silent, like her mother, as she cares for those who are not coping with the loss. It makes me proud and it makes me sad that she, so young has had to face so much of this. She comes to me when it gets to be too much. I listen, hold her and let her do her thing so she can bravely face the tragic circumstances with grace. She is her mother's child, my youngest. She has so much of my DNA on her face, my morals in her behavior, my strength in her character. She is now practiced in the art form of not falling apart, even when circumstances seem to demand it. Death becomes her, just like me. My darling girl will bury her friend, the charming boy who gave her rides throughout high school, who made her smile when she was having such a tough time. She will enter this situation with the grace and poise of someone much, much older. This last month has been tough. But we are all still here. Even as I think it is unbearable, I remember that we are all still here.