My Death Story

I recently told my death story while being interviewed by the Elisabeth Kubler Ross Foundation. It was the first time I told the entire story.

By young adulthood, I had gone through expected deaths; that of my grandparents and an uncle. 

But I was not prepared for violent, sudden death. My twenties would teach me a lot.

When I was in college, a woman lefty, feminist community was stabbed to death as she lay sleeping, by a misogynist psycho. Our Take Back the Night March that year was solemn, laced with outrage, grief and pain.

A year later, I unexpectantly ended up as a support person for a college friend whose friend had been murdered by the Marin County Trail Killer. I held her as she cried many a night. Then it turned out another woman she knew was killed by the same psycho killer.

A year later, in April 1981, my dear friend was waiting for her ranger boyfriend to get off work at Point Reyes and took a hike. She was raped, tortured and executed by the same deranged psychopath. This was his killing spree after 20 years in prison for rape. 

Until her death a few decades later, I stayed in touch via letters with my friend's mom. I still have all her letters. My friend's murder was life changing.

In graduate school a few years later, a curly-haired classmate pointed out a lump in his chest. I was a trained massage therapist and worked on loosening the muscles there; he was dead in a matter of months.

Every day after classes, I visited my pal, the department secretary, for laughter and to chill. One day she was driving with her son and took an exit ramp hard and the car flipped. They both died instantly. I still recall the soft, exhausted smile on her husband's lips at the funeral as he greeted the mourners, and the way his daughter-in-law faltered as she lay a rose on her husband's casket.

The deaths of aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, colleagues were peppered over the next couple of decades. 

In my fifties, my sister died of breast cancer that had metastasized to her brain, after a five-year struggle. She was bitter, felt cheated, but at the end, when she was thoroughly demented, Death's arms were a relief and a release.

Five years and 2 hours later, my momma died. She was 94 years old. I got to be with her for the last four years of her life. She felt she had outlived her usefulness, watching her body decline and her days become more restricted. We got to say our goodbyes and share our love for months. I knew all of her wishes. Nothing was left unfinished. She reached for Death.

She sang me "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina" before she became unconscious. She simply stopped taking another breath a few days later. 

Her acceptance of death was a huge gift. But the most unexpected gift was that after her death, I felt no experience of grief like I had with so many past, traumatic deaths.

I only felt love. 

What an epiphany! Grief is not mandatory!

I do miss her, but mostly I just love her.

You can watch the interview here.