Death Becomes Us

Does death bother you?
It doesn't bother me.
It used to.
Maybe it started with the first funeral I attended at age 7. I remember seeing my father's lifeless body in the casket, the shock dulled only by the excitement of the limo ride.
I was 7. Little things meant so much.
I remember getting on without him, and then losing my godmother and uncle within the two years after that. The last memory I had of my godmother was seeing her drink milk out of a glass at our kitchen table. I forever thought that glass was cursed after she drank out of it and died shortly thereafter, and I never would drink out of that glass again.
I tried to get my brother to drink out of it, but he outsmarted me.
We were a close, small family, so those losses were tremendous, especially in light of losing my father in 1983.
Life moved on and I would attend more funerals, the most shocking happening when I was a sophomore in high school. My cousin's baby son, aged 10 months, had died. Babies weren't supposed to die.
I was warned 15 years ahead of time that Chris Goddard would die. Chris was one of my greatest friends when we went through high school together, and I saw him go from walking on two feet to being wheel-chair bound by the time we graduated high school. He had Friedrich's ataxia (a form of muscular dystrophy) and we knew he would die by the time he was 30.
Variously, I've seen several friends killed before their time in car accidents. Those deaths shocked me, saddling my soul with grief.
So when a friend said to me today, "You're so strong," I appreciated the compliment. It's actually not that I'm strong. I've just developed a life philosophy that death is a part of life, an integral process that reminds us of how limited our time is on Earth.
I mean, think about it, where would we be if we lived forever?
The Earth would be really crowded and Ted Turner would have more to complain about. Jerry Seinfeld said it best when he said, "When you look at babies, remember this: They're here to replace us."
Indeed.
Plus, we'd never apologize to each other. I know I wouldn't have apologized to my mom (our relationship, admittedly, was tumultuous at times.) I know for sure she never would have apologized to me.
Like any self-respecting writer, I work best under deadlines.
I have mourned and will continue to mourn for my mother. It won't happen in a day, it won't happen in a year. She and my father created me and I developed inside her, I was connected to her, for better or for worse, for 32 years and 9 months (the time it took for me to bake inside her).
And trust me, my mother wasn't an easy personality. Dante and my brother are great sources on this. She was mean on good days and meaner on better days, a complicated mix of emotions and fear.
I will heal in my own time, as grief is an intensely personal process. I cried as I walked through Cleveland Hopkins International Airport on Monday, ready to board my plane and realizing that she wouldn't be there for me to call once I deplaned in Oklahoma City.
When we talked on the phone, I would have to scream in the phone because she refused to have volume control, although she was deaf and wore a hearing aid.
Me: "Mom, I'm home."
She: "What are you doing with foam?"
Me: "I said, `Home. I'm home!'"
She: "You mean the plane didn't crash? Why do you fly so much?"
That was always our conversation. She was always ready to plan my funeral as I stepped onto a plane. She couldn't face her fear of flying while on Earth, but she faced her ultimate fear when she died last week.
And one day, my funeral will happen. But for now, I walk the Earth and I am living my life, the life that she gave me.