Death, a guardian of life

There are some self-evident truths of life that we try to ignore; we banish out of our thoughts. One of these truths is the impermanence of life, that life is a cycle with a beginning and an end. One day, everything that was born will die, and everything that has started will end. This applies to everything including, people, relationships, structures, and empires. Despite the certainty of this fact, the end of what is dear always seems to take us by surprise. We never seem to be prepared to let go of things that are destined to end one day. This is especially true when it comes to the death of loved ones, and more so when the death is sudden. We never seem to be ready to face death. We don’t want to confront our mortality and the fragility of life. We prefer to treat death as something that happens to other people, hopefully to people we don’t know in faraway lands.

I was recently contacted by a friend asking me to talk to someone who had just lost her son in an accident. She thought that I might be able to soothe the bereaved because I have experience in dealing with the death of family members. She was particularly referring to my experience with the sudden death of my sister. That experience taught me that no amount of talking could help. We have to experience the pain, anguish, and myriad other feelings that such an event brings. We have to feel the impact and the devastation of such a loss. Talk is empty and hollow in these circumstances. It has a symbolic place; it is a gesture to show our support, to say to the other person that there is a shoulder they can cry on. But it can hardly soften the blow that our souls receive or lessen the crushing pains in our hearts.

The death of my sister was as sudden and dramatic as any event can be. The day started like any other day. The routine of our morning was carried out as it was always done. We made breakfast, brewed coffee, prepared the kids for kindergarten, and got ready for work. Then the telephone rang as innocently as it had a thousand times before. I answered that call in my normal professional morning voice. The person on the other side was in obvious distress; his voice was unrecognizable. His words came in bulk; they were indistinguishable, blurry and fuzzy, and made no sense. I immediately sensed the gravity of the call but couldn’t imagine how grave it was. The caller turned out to be my brother trying to deliver the news of the death of our younger sister. She was only 28 years old at that time. Her flight the night before had crashed into the sea. There were no survivors. She had her two little daughters with her; the youngest of them was less than a year old, and I never had had the chance to see her. The news came out of nowhere; I heard the words, but my mind couldn’t process them. I was in shock, my heart sank to my stomach, and the world spun around me.

Men, in general, are not well-equipped to handle emotions. I have been taught since an early age to act like a real man and not to show any weakness. I developed a strategy to deal with difficult emotions, which was to sweep them under the carpet and pretend that they don’t exist. In the aftermath of the tragedy, I tried to employ this strategy. I pretended that I could handle this loss and continue with my life as before. Of course, I was only lying to myself and everyone else. This monstrosity was not a normal emotion; no carpet of any size could hide it. As I carried on with my responsibilities and duties as well as I could, that anguish continued to grow; it was devouring me from inside. One day it eroded and overcame all my resistance and I fell like a hollowed-out tree. Darkness settled over my soul, and I saw life through the darkest of lenses. It was not only my resistance that was eroded; I also lost my faith, my self-confidence, my clear rational thinking, and my ability to make decisions and to follow them with actions. I became a hollow shadow of my former self and I couldn’t recognize the man I had become. I questioned and doubted everything I used to believe in. Life became absurd and meaningless and I needed, more than anything else, to find a meaning for what had happened. In that accident, I did not only lose my sister and her family; I also lost myself.

Personal losses of such magnitude are extremely heavy. They take years to process and there are no guarantees that we can find solace and peace at the end. Death seems to be the enemy of life, the terminator and the destroyer of happiness. It seems like a taker that never gives anything back. I suffered its blow as any other person could have suffered. In retrospect though, I could say that within death, that darkest of all dark events, there is a hidden door of light. I couldn’t see it then. I wouldn’t have believed during my darkest hours that there could be any value extracted from such pain, but there was. The sudden termination of those precious and dear lives made me question how to use the time I still had left. It made me re-evaluate the priorities of my life. Above all, it made me look for the only person I could salvage from that wreckage, myself.

Many of us live in a state of trance; we go through life as if we are leaves tossed around by the wind. We feel burdened by our obligations and duties and what we have to do to earn a living, create a career and build a family. We are not always conscious of where we spend our time or how. We don’t pay much attention to what we fill our lives with. Death comes to show us that life is short and time is precious. It reveals that life is not about quantity, but quality. Life should not be measured by the number of minutes we live, but by what we fill these minutes with. Death highlights the importance of being alive while we are still here. It is the ultimate instructor in the art of living because it pushes us to consider what we are doing with our lives. Death nudges us to see beyond the limitations we have built around ourselves. It urges us to take risks, to try something new. If we live with the certainty that we are going to die for sure, we might as well try to live while we are still breathing. This is the philosophy that death teaches us. It shows us that life is precious and says “take advantage of time while you can”.

We can try to make time our friend, not our enemy. This is not about living a hyperactive life where we try to achieve as much as possible. It is about making decisions that make us and those we love happy. It is about creating an enjoyable life experience for everyone. The loss of loved ones is heavy but inevitable. We might as well prepare ourselves for it by giving our best in every interaction. We can try to be sincere and act from our hearts, to be present with a loving attitude. Let’s take the chance to show the people we love just how much we love and care for them. Let’s say words that soothe the heart and create beautiful memories. The memories will always live with us. This is what I have learned through my experience with death. My sister’s untimely departure transformed me. It made me appreciate life and live it as authentically as I can. Her absence will never be replaced, but in the honor of her memory I can, at least, say that I have learned my lesson.

Today marks the 21st anniversary of my sister’s death and this article is written to honor her memory.

Photo by Melissa Castillo on Unsplash