Visitations

I think about death, from time to time, and everything that flows from it; sadness, grief, contemplation, major and minor life changes, and life. I've known a fair amount of people who have died and, with all of them, there is a commonality: I don't like seeing them dead. As in, physically, I do not like looking at someone in a coffin, or simply looking at their coffin knowing they are in it, or standing over their grave, or next to their marker in a mausoleum.

Indeed, I never go through life seriously contemplating what it would be like if someone close to me died. The only exception to this was my dad, who survived for ten months after his cancer diagnosis. With every visit, I studied him closely, silently, snatching a glance when he wasn't looking, thinking to myself: 'Right now, he's alive, with breath in his lungs and blood pulsing in his veins. His brain is functioning and alert. His voice works. I can talk with him. At some point, sooner rather than later, he will be a corpse. Dead flesh that wouldn't know me from Adam. Absolutely no awareness whatsover.'

All of those thoughts were over twenty years ago.

During the intervening years since my father's passing, I've visited his grave a handful of times. To be honest, it's not something I enjoy very much. It doesn't escape my attention that the once-living, breathing man who was my father is now a slowly-rotting corpse six feet beneath my feet. It is not how I want to think of him, and why I am not a proponent of cemeteries.

A few years ago I visited the final resting place of Bret, a friend from the mid-to-late '90s. Bret would turn 44-years-old next week. As it stands, he took his life ten years ago, and his remains now occupy the corner of a mausoleum at Tippecanoe Memorial Gardens in West Lafayette, Indiana. When I knew Bret, he was young, vibrant, full of life. It is sometimes difficult to compute the stark contrast of remembering when someone was alive, and when they are no more than lifeless remains.

Perhaps the most worrisome aspect of viewing someone who is deceased (either directly or indirectly) is the odd sense of superiority it can impart. Temporary superiority, of course. And 'superiority' may be the wrong word for it, but allow me to explain.

When we are interacting with those around us, there is -- for the most part -- an equality of life. We are conscious, independent beings. We choose to be around one another. We communicate, we connect. We engage in willingly shared experiences. When one of us has died, that is no longer the case. The dynamic of the relationship has changed. One of us is now viewing the other. One of us has had our lives ended, while the other carries on, living, breathing, experiencing. It feels strange to be in a dead person's presence.

Finally, if we're being honest, there's the knowledge that perhaps causes the most unease of all -- that it will happen to us. Someday, the people we are interacting with (we don't know which ones) will be standing over our coffins, or our graves, or standing next to our remains that are tucked into a mausoleum somewhere, and will have the advantage. The advantage of life. And we will never know they're there.