About Death

/ Jeff Cann

Two scenarios; contradictory, and neither is true:

Michael Weeks at forty-two years old: he spends his evenings in the company of his wife, his children and his dogs. He’s fulfilled by his career; his relationships are enduring; his hobbies, rewarding. He’s rarely sick. In total, he’s content.

Or…

Michael Weeks at forty-two: he’s divorced and lonely; he’s dissatisfied with his friendships, miserable in his job. Nightly, he watches TV, drinks beer, and dreads tomorrow.

Michael Weeks is the eight-year-old boy buried next to my mother. If he didn’t die, he could be one of those people I just described. His parents mourn him to this day. They try to envision the life he might be living. Their version. I’m sure, resembles the first picture I painted.

My mother died at forty-nine. If she was still alive, she’d be eighty-two.

Death leaves a void, a hole in the universe of unrealized potential. Because she died in middle-age, my mother lived only half her life. You think I’m being optimistic. “Forty-nine,” you say, “is a bit beyond halfway.” I’m not so sure. My father, now eighty-eight, seems unstoppable. After my mother died, he mourned. He regrouped. He dated. And then he remarried. His second twenty-fifth anniversary was a month ago. My father says he’s living his second life.

Besides her husband, my mother left behind three adult sons, none yet married, and grandchildren years away. Her career, launched when I left for college, was a work in process. Her second life just began.

Losing the chance to live a full life seems like the ultimate rip-off. It’s like receiving just a morsel of a promised reward. We put in our time on earth, building a life, a personality, relationships—building our-selves—and suddenly it’s all stripped away. For Michael Weeks, only eight years invested on his part, but the possibility of that life is lost forever. For his parents, devastation. The boy they created and nurtured into a human being, simply gone.

And my mother? Forty-three good years, happy years, I think. And six years of illness. She knew she was dying from the start. My father found a diary she wrote early on. She lived an eighth of her life expecting it to be soon be gone for good.

When we die, we start over, but not from scratch. The important lessons we learn during our lives are carried with us into our next life. We build on that knowledge, we keep improving. We’ve all known an “old soul.” Someone who gets it without seeming to put in the necessary effort. The rest of us flail about receiving our bumps and bruises, breaks and contusions. The old souls, if we watch them carefully, we can learn from them.

My mother, I think, was early in the soul-growing-game. Or that’s how I remember her. She was simple, naïve. Lots of hugs, but quick to emotion—good and bad. In the sixties, we still got spanked. The tool was a foot-long scrap of a leather belt. My father made spankings a production: “I’m going to get the strap!” he said. And then he disappeared for three or four minutes. The real punishment was terrified anticipation. My mother, on the other hand, just swatted away.

Christians believe in heaven. A place they can meet-up with those they’ve lost, a place to get together with loved ones in a future world. Michael Weeks’ parents are Christian. Knowing there’s a future is the only way they lived through losing their child. Or this is what I believe.

I lived through my mother’s death by getting drunk. I started drinking around the time she got sick and I doubled-down when she died. I turned my pain into a party. A long, sorrowful party. Sometimes I wonder if I even grieved at all. I might have skipped that step during the hangover.

My mother’s grave is depressing. The headstone, really just a plaque on the ground, is sunken into the sod. Grass and dirt cover the edges and creep across the stone. At times, it can be hard to find. On rainy days, her marker turns into a little puddle of mud on the ground.

When I was young and unencumbered and had fewer uses for my money, I considered paying to have the headstone dug up and reset. But I never made the call. For all I know, the stone is completely buried now, overgrown. Fortunately, there’s a trio of trees nearby to use as a guide. Or there was. It’s been a decade since I’ve been there. Those trees might be gone as well. But I can still use Michael Weeks as a landmark. His grave will be forever maintained.

23 thoughts on “About Death”

  1. Oh how achingly, desperately sad. And yet. . . a reminder that love and memory endure. A reminder to live while we live because the only requirement–the only choice we cannot make–in life is that we must die.
    As the mother to an eight-year-old boy, and not far from forty-nine myself, your words remind me of the preciousness of every day.
    I’m so so sorry for your loss. I do, however, relish your words.

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  2. J—What a tender and heartfelt reflection on the human-ness of death. My father died when he was 49. It seems so young now. I spent the entire time on valium and wine while I went about the business of planning a funeral and burying him. He knew he was going to die but he kept it a secret until the end. I think his life was lived in order to impact those he loved…that is the only way to make sense of its brevity and its pain. A marker on the ground was his final contribution. XO DWD

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  7. Honest emotion and sadness that I’ve not had to experience, the early death of either a parent or child. My dad, however, at age 12 was sent away for three years to learn a trade. When he had completed his training, he returned home to see his parents and left the next morning to come to America. He never saw them again and when they passed on, it was the only time I’d seen him cry.
    It’s the reason Michael Weeks son still lives in his parents hearts.

    Thought we’d see more of you when you left the Y.

    Regie

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  10. You could certainly see your expertise in the work you write. The world hopes for more passionate writers like you who aren’t afraid to say how they believe. At all times go after your heart.

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