What is it about hearing about someone’s death?

I think it’s the finality. It’s done; it’s over.

I’ve lived through two sudden deaths of people I knew – one a very close friend, one a gaming acquaintance – and both times it was the shock of hearing that undid me. It’s the sudden reversal of reality, the unreality of the statement “he is dead” when you saw him just a couple of days ago, that sounds a sour note.

Now there’s another. One of my best (and definitely my oldest) friends — my maid of honour at my wedding — lost her dad to a sudden heart attack last night. Completely out of the blue. I’ve known this man since I was thirteen. He’s jovial, educated, a musician. My parents’ age. Nowhere near the age you start preparing for maybe, just possibly, expecting to lose someone.

Or, he was.

Maybe that’s it. Maybe it’s the is/was problem. It’s all so fresh, so new, that in your mind a person simultaneously exists and does not exist. You crumble little by little as you try to impose the new reality of the death upon the X years of life you’ve experienced with this person. On top of it all, the news about the death throws that person’s reality into sharp relief, making it harder to wrap your mind around the fact that they’ve died.

I heard someone say once that no parent should outlive a child. At the same time, though, I think that the most traumatic thing most children live through is losing their parents. How do you accept the loss of someone who birthed you, guided you, supported you, from day one?

When it’s someone else, you’re all at sea in a different way. Death hits us all pretty hard. Apart from coping yourself, and looking at your own family in a different light, there’s dealing with the bereaved. (Bereaved. What a word. Where does it come from? Riven? Be-riven? Bereft?) You love them desperately, and you want to express your own sorrow, but words just don’t cut it. Especially when someone is torn from you like that. When was the last time they spoke? Was it quick, superficial, both assuming they’d see one another again, that there would be a next time?

Death is part of the whole life experience, not a sudden stop, or an intrusion. It’s an essential part of the cycle. So many people fear it. I don’t think I do; it’s the loss of everyone else that I worry about. The change of pace, as it were. It’s the change that I’m uncertain of. Fear of the unknown, I suppose, which is understandable. We’re creatures of habit. Being Pagan means I accept that cycles continue and that existence transforms into another dimension, maybe this one over again if there’s more to learn, maybe another, maybe back to the beginning to grow young again in the underworld until my essence is prepared for a rebirth to do more good. None of that means I’ll go joyfully to my death – or accept anyone else’s death, family, husband, friends – easily. We all have to deal with loss. We grieve for ourselves, for others. Our freshly riven minds must heal. Our hearts must mend. Our tears must dry. I do still cry for my maternal grandfather each Easter, a gentle man who I knew for all of eleven or twelve years. However, I grieve for not knowing him better. Perhaps we grieve for lost chances, opportunities we’ll never have. So often we don’t rejoice in the good times, laugh at the joy the deceased brought. Death encompasses us all. It brings us freedom. However, at the same time, it cuts us off. Another dichotomy we can’t hold concurrently in our bruised minds.

Death means holding two truth simultaneously: the truth of the shining soul we knew, alive forever, in our hearts and elsewhere; and our crushing loss for which there are no words.

Go gently, Eric.