Life Cycle

It's a sad thing that I don't want to write about the things I have due tomorrow. They're awfully important, but so is what's actually at the front of my mind—the cycles of life and death. Specifically, at the moment, the end of that cycle. Yesterday morning, one of my great-uncles, my grandmother's brother, passed away. He's the first of my grandmother's siblings to die, and I can't imagine how she's feeling about that. Her brother, someone she's known and been kin to all of her life, is no longer a part of the world. Or, at least, not a part of the conscious and present world.

I'm reminded of a summer a few years ago that saw three of my grandmother's siblings-in-law—spouses of her brother and my grandfather's sisters—pass away. Uncle Herb; Aunt Marian; Uncle Ken. Aunt Anne has since joined them, and now Uncle Don is included in their number. How must it be for her, to have lived 75 years in a world of life and death, and to now have the members of your generation passing away almost faster than your grandchildren can keep count?

She's been there before, my grandmother. My grandfather died in 1984, around the same time that two of his brothers, my uncles Charlie and Mart, also passed. How did she feel then? She was relatively young—around 50, my parents' current age—and already dealing with the death of her own generation in the family she had married into.

How do I deal with it? I still shed a couple of tears for Uncle Don, though I barely knew him and I don't think I've seen him in years. In part I did so because I don't understand death, and it just happened to someone who was somehow connected to me. More so, I think it happened because my mother, my grandmother, and my newly-widowed great-aunt flashed across my mind. Though I don't understand death, I understand well the pain that goes with it; just eight months ago I mourned the loss of my cousin Kayla, the first family member in my generation to leave this world. I know that death is a natural part of life, I know that loss is something to be grieved, I know that pain cannot—and should not—be avoided. And yet, I find myself not knowing how to deal with it, let alone wanting to do so. My western self likes its tidy boxes, its happy-ever-after stories. But life has circles, not ever-afters.

Dear Grandma, how do you deal with it year after year? Dear reader, how do you?