Processing the Experience

The last tasks are being completed regarding our loved one's passing. These tasks involve summarizing her life in a few paragraphs, and sending letters to those who knew her. The writing provides a time for reflection.

My mind is on the bigger picture again. I am sad that death is not organic to our culture. We have no traditions which guide us through the dying. (Traditions, yes, but only after the death has occurred, and very commercially driven). We had to find our way through many obstacles during our loved one's passing, and we were operating in the dark. Conflict, confusion, and fatigue served to further alienate parts of our already broken family rather than to bring it closer together.

Earlier in my life, I had the experience of living for an extended time in a much more traditional (post tribal) culture in the Pacific Islands, and so I have known a life in which life transitions are surrounded by and guided by strong and unifying traditions. Such a life does not insulate one from exhaustion, fear, grief, or even anxiety, but it provides a pathway and guides, so that one does not have to experience these inevitable states in a blinding chaos.

In such a life, there is also ample time allotted to the telling of stories which result from struggles such as the death story of our loved one. We will be hard pressed to find time to relate these stories to our children in a way that can provide either completion for us, or education for them.

The hospice facility was a merciful refuge both for our dying loved one and for us. Both Papa and I were moved to think about volunteering at a hospice as we have volunteered at the retreat center in Tucson. The endeavors of these organizations fit the more wholistic vision of life we experienced during our time in the Pacific.

As I write this, I realize that these are abstract generalizations about very visceral experiences. Abstractions themselves are a symptom of the very thing I lament.