Last night, I left my cell phone in my study instead of my usual practice of connecting it to an outlet just outside the bedroom door to charge. I wish I would have followed my usual actions. Had I done what I usually do, I would have received the call and the text about my brother’s death when they were respectively made and sent. My brother, Tom, died shortly after midnight this morning. Though he had been in severely declining health in recent months and weeks—and the speed of decline had accelerated dramatically in recent days—the reality this morning of his death is a shock.
My process of mourning his loss began long ago, when it became apparent that his generally poor health was getting worse. I thought, well over a year ago, that he probably did not have very long to live. Heart problems, renal problems, uncooperative joints, rapid weight loss, and a long and unceasing history of smoking all pointed to the inevitable. But steeling oneself to the inevitable does not make one immune to the impact of the inevitable. It hurts. A lot. Yet my brother’s death relieves both the physical pain he felt and the mental anguish those close to him felt as a result of knowing he was in discomfort, distress, and pain.
I am grateful that my brother is no longer in pain. And may the memory of my brother bring those who knew him some comfort in mourning his loss.
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Yesterday brought about the end of another life. The physical condition of my sweetheart’s dog, long suffering from a heart murmur, declined so precipitously that that the need to end his pain became obvious. Yesterday morning, my sweetheart made the difficult but absolutely correct decision to have A.J., her 12-year-old Shih Tzu, euthanized. Just after noon yesterday, we took him to the veterinarian, who very gently and painlessly put him to sleep. I knew A.J. for only eight months, but I became extremely attached to him in that time. I’ll miss him more than I would have thought possible just a few months ago. My sweetheart’s love of A.J. was immense and intense, which is why she decided his pain and discomfort had to end. She is a strong woman.
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These two sharp, deeply jarring jolts rattled my emotional cage. My mind is racing with thoughts about mortality and love and questions about whether expressing one’s grief openly and without restraint is a sign of mental health or mental illness. What is grief? Is it an expression of one’s own pain? Or is it a vicarious expression of the emptiness of that small piece of the world no longer occupied by a physical body—a body that represents an emotional entity that can no longer be experienced?
I am reeling with the experience of deaths too closely spaced. My wife’s death just thirteen months ago occasionally still sears me like a piece of molten iron, though the metal is cooling. My brother’s death this morning is a fresh wound of a different kind, but still sharp and painful. And the wound caused by the death of my sweetheart’s little dog brings about yet another kind of pain.
We live through these experiences, though. We have little choice but to accept them and the pain that goes with them. The pain will ease, though the memories never cease.
