The Inheritance of Loss

No one is ever ready for the death of a loved one, whether an aging parent or a sibling whose life is cut short.

This reality was brought home to me this year, when my Aunt Fredrena and Aunt Loupenn, two of my mothers’ sisters, died within a few months of each other. While we are all faithful that they are going to a better place, a place where we again might see them, we don’t know what happens to our loved ones or ourselves after our bodies have died. In reality, only God knows. The one thing we do know is that death is the final retort to the life we know and cherish.

My aunts had lived full and complete lives, living into their 80s and 90s, and having children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. When Aunt Loupenn died, I felt no less pain in knowing that her life had achieved its full and final measure. Perhaps it was the look on my mother’s face when I arrived in Marion to be with family. Her face bore a peculiar and unfamiliar look of pain and resignation that told me that she had finally accepted the finality of her sister’s death, and the imminent approach of her own passing.

My mother’s generation has reached its winter season; once the chain of life is broken within a family, especially in the way it was with my aunts’ passing, in quick succession, those of her generation can’t help but think that it’s only a matter of time for them.

For those in the spring and summer of our lives, we often act as if life will go on forever. We constantly plan for the future and rarely take into account the eventuality of our deaths. When a loved one dies we often experience excruciating pain and feelings of loss, even if the death was natural and predictable. These deaths, these reductions in certainty, challenge our routines and imprint themselves upon our identities.

Each morning in the 25 years since my father’s death, I have called my mother after waking up and conferencing my brothers in on the call. Over the years, this ritual of gratitude has evolved beyond the bounds of duty and attained the force of habit.

As hard as I might try, I cannot even fathom a life in which I am not able to hear my mother’s voice on the other end of the line. However, even as such a reality challenges my imagination, my rational mind knows of its impending probability. 

As a person of middle age and (to my knowledge) great health, the passing of my parents’ generation holds special significance. It means that very soon, my siblings and I will attain senior status within our families. All of those who have come behind us, sons and daughters, nieces and nephews, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, will begin to look to us for guidance and wisdom. I am humbled by this daunting reality, and am gradually gaining awareness of its consequences, rewards and challenges.

As we age, our bodies, even if well cared for, eventually break down.  And with every birth among the ensuing generations, we are reminded of our younger selves and the miracle of life.
Perhaps the most formidable challenge that death poses to our faith is its seeming finality. In many religious and cultural traditions, the uncertainty over what happens to us when we die is absolved through various rituals, the funeral pyre, the eulogy, ancestor worship, mummification, you name it, otherwise the loss would be too shocking and too irredeemable for many of us to go on living.

However, while faith can inure us against our feelings of grief and loss, it rarely grants us the intellectual certitude we crave. There is no way for the living way to measure or investigate the world we hope and pray our loved ones may inherit upon leaving this world—ours is an inheritance of loss.

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