Escape

My aunt died 3 days ago.

She was in her forties, and left behind a husband, 4 kids, and a new daughter-in-law. Her death was a shock to everyone - even though she weighed about 200 lbs more than was good for her, and had been confined to her bed for over 4 years.

Even though I rarely saw her, she'd been a big part of my childhood - she was generous, liked by everybody, and put everybody else's comfort before her own. She was a wonderful parent - and made sure her kids grew up to be respectful and hardworking.

It's strange that I haven't mourned her death as much as I would have expected myself to. I suppose physical distance does that to you.

I wonder if dealing with death becomes easier as you grow older. Or if age just makes things worse. I feel desensitized right now, but I know things would have been different if I had been in the same house as the rest of her family members, wading through a flood of memories.

When I was 10, my grandmother passed away. I had been inconsolable. My cousin and I used to fight over whose house our grandmother would live in, and I still have fond memories of her, despite a very vivid memory of her calling me 'bedhab' - which meant 'disobedient brat'.

It's hard to imagine how things change while we're away; it seems that we expect people and places to remain the same, even though we ourselves change. Nothing seems real to me right now: I can only try to remember the times that I spent with my aunt, little things that I wish I had listened more closely to, the wasted moments when I chose to go out and do insignificant things when I could have pleased her by spending a little more time with her. When I picture my next visit home, I reach a dead-end ... a place of such infinite sadness that I don't want to go there. I make a U-turn and go back to laughing with my friends, or reading a book.

The book I was reading recently, 'Waiting for Daisy', explained the Japanese notion of wabi-sabi: life, like the cherry blossom, is beautiful because of its impermanence, not in spite of it, more exquisite for the inevitability of loss.

It makes sense...but wisdom about the inevitability of life and death does not help.
At all.