Take Me Away From All This Death

I don't even know how to talk about the sorrow I feel. It sits like a cold, jagged space in the middle of my chest.  This Friday I fly back to Wisconsin to finally bury my sister Melissa, the sister who died of a combination of pneumonia and heart attack just before Valentines Day 2011. Her death was so close to the holiday that when I returned to my home after the funeral, I was greeted by a Valentines Day card she likely mailed to me the day she died.

I received the call telling me my sister died while I was talking to a tattoo artist about adding to a piece I'd had done in memory of my mother who had died in August 2008.  That tattoo is a heart with the words "I love you forever" curved around the bottom.  My mother always signed every card, letter, and email this way, and I wanted a permanent imprint on my body to remind me that my mother still loved me forever.  The tattoo artist and I were discussing flowers when my nephew Josh called.  I didn't realize what he was calling about, so I asked if I could call him back.  Once I left the studio and returned his call, hearing the news, I wandered the streets near the studio, not remembering where I had parked my car.  I was stunned and I was in shock.  I walked in that confusion for an hour until I finally found my car. I flew home to Wisconsin the next day to attend my sister's funeral.  My beloved, beloved sister.

Funerals are occasions to get things done. Talk to the funeral home. Order the programs. Create a picture board in memory of.  You're so busy, you don't have time to feel the full brunt of the grief. But when I walked into the room to view my sister's body, that is when I broke down. And when I say broke down, I mean sobbing. Deep, deep sobbing that weakened my body and drew me down to the ground.  My sister was dead. The sister who sent me care packages. The sister who called to make sure I was okay. The sister who sat up all night with me, as my mother died, sitting vigil with me, each of us helping the other through the deadening pain. My sister.

So Friday I fly home to finally bury my sister's ashes a year and a half after she died--my brother-in-law seemed to not be emotionally able to deal with a burial, and only my diagnosis of cancer pushed him towards letting us bury her at all.  Now I sit with the pain freshened up in my soul, reminding me that neither my sister nor my mother are here to help, to call me, to comfort me, to hold my hand through this horrible cancer journey.  Yes, I'm selfish. I want them here to comfort me.  I feel lonely in the world without them. I want them back. Just like my brother-in-law, I don't want to bury my sister either, if it meant I could have my sister Melissa here with me again.

But Melissa is dead, and she left burial instructions.  So no matter how painful the task, I will help to ensure her burial instructions are honored.  Melissa will be buried on a rolling hill, overlooking the Wisconsin farmland she lived on for many years.  It is what she wanted.

Years ago, on my way home, I'd take a short cut through a small cemetery.  Towards the edge of that cemetery was a small grave, a lamb sculpted into the top of the headstone. The toddler buried there died in 1935. And over fifty years later, every week someone was leaving fresh flowers near the stone. I used to wonder about that grave. Was the mother of that barely two-year old child still leaving those flowers? Or was it maybe the sister of that child, the mother leaving an indelible mark of sisterly duty, compelling the living child to continue to leave flowers, even after the mother had died.  Either way, those flowers represented over fifty years of dwelling on death and loss, and that struck me as very sad.

In a similar way, my life has become about death and loss, whether the deaths are those of my sister and mother along with two close friends, or my own possible death due to breast cancer. Whatever the death or loss, I'm tired of it.  As Winona Ryder's character desperately whispered to Gary Oldman's Dracula in the 1992 movie Dracula, "Take me away from all this death."  Her breathy whisper always struck me as Winona Ryder's morbid call for Calgon to take her away.

Like that death-whelmed character in Dracula, I want Calgon to take me away too.  I don't want to lay flowers on anyone else's grave. I don't want to help anyone else die.  I don't want to think about death and dying anymore. Screw Elisabeth Kubler-Ross and her death and dying.  I want to live.

Anyone else want join me in being alive? Let's not talk about funerals anymore.  How about we skip the imaginings of end of days and burial plots? Let's focus on babies and puppies and sprouting fields of wheat. Let's wallow in new car smell, freshly planted mint, scrumptious meals, movies that won't be out for years to come. That's the kind of life I want to live. A life focused on life rather than death.  Because frankly, I'm just plain sick and tired of death. So let's all get back to the business of living and be done with it. Damnit.  I'm off to Kmart to buy some new car smell in a can. I'll drive. Wanna join me? Hop on in.