The light of today is a bit dimmer this time around as a particular light switch in my life has been turned off. My future though, still approaches at a frantic pace, so to the future my eyes will remain. But never think for a moment that I did not notice the flicker and the diminished brightness of my life. Goodbye, mom, and may your soul rest in peace now that it no longer has to hold up the pain that the end of your life showed you.
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Recently, my mother passed away. We all kind of saw it coming, even at times expected it much earlier than it actually happened. Miracles happened along the way to keep her around a bit longer, though she seemed to suffer for each of them a bit more, every time. Before she passed I had written a blog post, saved it as a draft, and honestly held on to it waiting for a good time to publish it. It was about death, and how it affects me, and honestly I didn’t want to publish it while she was alive and could read it.
Drama enveloped the family after her passing and honestly, I ended up forgetting all about the post. But now, as my summer vacation winds down, I find myself writing again, and I also find that post…gone. So, I now find myself having to rewrite it…ugh. Anyways, I know this post won’t be as good as the one that is gone, but I’ll give it my best shot, even with this shoddy intro. I'm sure you noticed, though, the first paragraph up there, that was my Eulogy to my mother that I posted on Facebook.
Now, how to continue this after that two paragraph pseudo-intro? Bleh. Death. Say what you will, it’s a part of life. Pretty much every religion in the world gives some sort of way to survive it, but all in all, it’s the end of this amazing experience that is life.
But other’s pass away from our lives constantly and so many are effected emotionally by it. Don’t get me completely wrong here, I’m not heartless, I do miss the people that have gone on, but I have never cried at a funeral. I only expect to cry at one in the future, if my wife passes before I do, since she’s such a huge part of my life. My grandmother raised me and there’s not a passing moment that I wish she could have met my wife, yet she never did, she never even got close.
To me, the most heartbreaking thing in life is when people chose to leave it. Not kill themselves, I mean just chose to go away and never come back. Ugh, it kills me to think about all the friends I’ve loved, trusted, cried or laughed with, and respected that I will never see or hear from again. How can anyone just fade away from something so substantial?
It happens though, over and over. Death is final, absolute. I don’t have to wonder about any what-ifs or how are they. They are gone and I’ll for sure never see them again. They may or may not have enriched my life, but if they did I will be eternally grateful and remember them.
Mourning to me is as silly as longing for a past significant-other to my wife. Dwelling on someone that gave up is just flat out silly to her. When she was a teen she says constantly, that she only gave people one shot. If they broke it off, they didn’t get a second chance. Yet many pined for her long afterwards, only getting a cold shoulder.
Death truly is a part of life and life is truly nothing without the concept of moving on. Those people are now confined to the past, they’ll never be in the future, but their memories live on within you. It’s a hard subject for most and much of the time I do come off as cold hearted, but in the end, I don’t care….
Life, to me, is all about living, moving forward, making a better tomorrow, finding happiness and beauty. Dwelling too long on the past ruins everything. It can even ruin the memories of the good times that exist in memories.
As I said earlier, I lost my mom just a few months ago, as of this writing. I miss her in my own way, but my future is absolutely ahead of me. I’m taking life by the horns and doing something I never thought I’d ever truly do with my life, crafting a future with my wife that will far and above be worth living.
Mom was a good woman in her own way. She had flaws and good parts and I will remember all that can. She will always be missed, but that missing will not interfere with the life I know she would be proud of for her son. I got the call about her passing during class, before a major exam. My professor was kind enough to allow my wife and I to take the exam at a different time, yet beside that hiccup, I continued on with my schooling, didn’t miss a day. She did not have a funeral, so I didn’t have to travel back to the accused hometown for that, nor have I been back for any other reason. Life simply just kept going on, as it always does. And that, is simply, how death affects me.
The pains of yesterday are only memories, as the future is the only thing worth building towards in the present.
-Dan
