The first step we take after our last breath of life.
Where to?
That is the unending mystery.
My younger brother passed this past week—cancer. My older brother, in hospice, will follow him soon—also cancer.
I’ve become an end-of-life phone caretaker through this year. To share the slow dying process with someone is both emotionally difficult and satisfying. Our conversations are trickled with humor, padded with the support of love, and touch on some of the most purposeful shared memories and experiences.
But, always, in the back shadows of these thoughts lurk the apprehension, the fear, and the uncertainty of the unknown about death.
In one of the last coherent conversations I had with my brother before his passing, he told me: “I just want to go and be with momma and Pat (our younger brother who died in Vietnam).”
Were the two there to greet him when he took his first step into death?
I don’t know, truly don’t know.
In his brilliant novel “You Can’t Go Home Again,” Thomas Wolfe offered this encouragement before his premature death: “Something has spoken to me in the night...and told me that I shall die, I know not where. Saying: ‘[Death is] to lose the earth you know for greater knowing; to lose the life you have, for greater life; to leave the friends you loved, for greater loving; to find a land more kind than home, more large than earth.’”
My brother may now be no more than ashes in a urn, but as long as there are memories of his life by those who loved him, he is still alive.
Especially when we can see it on the horizon, death makes each of realize what Wolfe meant when he said “you can’t go home again”:
“You can't go back home to your family, back home to your childhood, back home to romantic love, back home to a young man's dreams of glory and of fame, back home to exile, to escape to Europe and some foreign land, back home to lyricism, to singing just for singing's sake, back home to aestheticism, to one's youthful idea of 'the artist' and the all-sufficiency of 'art' and 'beauty' and 'love,' back home to the ivory tower, back home to places in the country, to the cottage in Bermude, away from all the strife and conflict of the world, back home to the father you have lost and have been looking for, back home to someone who can help you, save you, ease the burden for you, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time--back home to the escapes of Time and Memory.”
Rest in peace, my brother. We will all join you in due time.
DEATH
The first step we take after our last breath of life.
Where to?
That is the unending mystery.
My younger brother passed this past week—cancer. My older brother, in hospice, will follow him soon—also cancer.
I’ve become an end-of-life phone caretaker through this year. To share the slow dying process with someone is both emotionally difficult and satisfying. Our conversations are trickled with humor, padded with the support of love, and touch on some of the most purposeful shared memories and experiences.
But, always, in the back shadows of these thoughts lurk the apprehension, the fear, and the uncertainty of the unknown about death.
In one of the last coherent conversations I had with my brother before his passing, he told me: “I just want to go and be with momma and Pat (our younger brother who died in Vietnam).”
Were the two there to greet him when he took his first step into death?
I don’t know, truly don’t know.
In his brilliant novel “You Can’t Go Home Again,” Thomas Wolfe offered this encouragement before his premature death: “Something has spoken to me in the night...and told me that I shall die, I know not where. Saying: ‘[Death is] to lose the earth you know for greater knowing; to lose the life you have, for greater life; to leave the friends you loved, for greater loving; to find a land more kind than home, more large than earth.’”
My brother may now be no more than ashes in a urn, but as long as there are memories of his life by those who loved him, he is still alive.
Especially when we can see it on the horizon, death makes each of realize what Wolfe meant when he said “you can’t go home again”:
“You can't go back home to your family, back home to your childhood, back home to romantic love, back home to a young man's dreams of glory and of fame, back home to exile, to escape to Europe and some foreign land, back home to lyricism, to singing just for singing's sake, back home to aestheticism, to one's youthful idea of 'the artist' and the all-sufficiency of 'art' and 'beauty' and 'love,' back home to the ivory tower, back home to places in the country, to the cottage in Bermude, away from all the strife and conflict of the world, back home to the father you have lost and have been looking for, back home to someone who can help you, save you, ease the burden for you, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time--back home to the escapes of Time and Memory.”
Rest in peace, my brother. We will all join you in due time.