Death Is Not Done with Me Yet

 I woke to another liminal space this morning.

The day is a bridge between places again, between rivers of my life, between . . . just between. Tonight, after a full day during which I must somehow squeeze in some packing and tidying and watering my plants, I’ll drive back to Washington, back to Mom’s house, and into the space of death and family grief once again.

My aunt died two years ago, a casualty of COVID-19, when she was unable to get a surgery she needed because medical resourcing was dedicated almost exclusively to meeting the challenges of the pandemic. My aunt and uncle had been planning their 50^th anniversary celebration. Her death, just weeks shy of their anniversary, was a cruel irony.

I remember writing a tribute the morning after she died. I wrote about the open space of grieving that the pandemic demanded, as families were unable to come together to support each other, to celebrate, and to bury loved ones. I wrote about the sheer bewilderment of my uncle as he was left with the solitary task of planning a celebration of my aunt’s life (someday) instead of the partnered planning of a celebration of their life together.

Then we all waited.

Waited for the pandemic to end. (It hasn’t.) For the right time to gather to celebrate my aunt’s life and to grieve together. (Is there an obvious “right time”?)  For the confusion of the new landscape to begin to clear and show us its markers as we find our way through unfamiliar territory.

More than a month ago, my uncle decided it was time. We set the date. June 12. We began to make plans. A beautiful memorial celebration at their home with family and close friends. There would be food and flowers and storytelling, and the wearing of bright colors instead of the dark shades of bereavement. I began to think about what a memorial two years after a death might look like. How to celebrate, remember, honor, and grieve now, without taking us all back into the days just after her death and into the immediacy of all that. I began to pull together readings and prayers and poetry.

What was it? A week or two later that my mother went into the hospital, and then died a week after that, and then a week later the funeral and burial, and a week later the trip back home (for me), and now another week later and I am going back and our family, still raw with my mother’s death, will gather again to remember and celebrate my aunt?

I pause. Close my eyes. And breathe.

And we will . . . show up again for each other and for what life and love call us to. 

 

 

 

Creating Space: Three Months of Showing Up for What’s Showing Up is a daily writing practice.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012 and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.