A Good Death

This past fall I travelled for the funeral of a dear friend. Those around me who had to adjust their lives in order to make space for this were kind and supportive and made that face we all know too well. That '“ooooh, I am so sorry for your loss and these words are a pitiful attempt to express that to you but what else are we to say in times like these” face. I am not judging these people or these faces they made, not in the least. Rather, reflecting on how helpless we all seems to feel when it comes to the matter of death. Our faces contort and scrunch up and express awkwardness because somewhere in our beings we know the importance of tending to death…and that we do not know how to do it.

But I’m not here to just talk about the faces we make when we don’t know what else to do, I want to tell you about my friend. I want to fill up page, after page about the life he lived, but I don’t need to. You will understand the importance of his story after you hear about the death he lived.

Two months after his partner of many years finally got the “okay you’re clear” from a viscous battle with breast cancer he got a diagnosis that gave him less than a year to live. It was fucking ruthless. But they got to work…living his death. We got months to love on him, to love on them both. We got to give them a proper audience to show how much they loved each other, their families and the life they had built. We rallied, food was cooked, porches sat upon till thew wee hours, we got in the woods, we got in the waters, and of course threw a few fantastic parties. Not one opportunity to say what needed to be said and to love the way we needed to love was missed. In those months no one was confused; no one wondered what was important, no one worked late and skipped a dinner, no one hung up without saying “I Love You”, We let the sadness get all over us and then tucked it in at night with a heavy blanket of love.

When he passed, the services were so beautiful. Every single moment was cared for as if it alone were a life time. It was sad and good. My friend, in all his grace, wrote “us” a letter. He had it read as we stood at his grave because he knew his death was about all us of us, it was about living. It brought me to my knees; not from ache but from joy. To hear his words one more time, to know for sure, what it is he wanted me to understand about his life, it was such a gift.

In over 4 decades of living and almost just as many suffering the loss that death brings to our lives, no one has ever so beautifully invited death to live the last of his life with him. Fearless and full of love, his last months have changed me. I will make friends with death by opening wide to the body of life. The Philosopher G.I. Gurdjieff, one that I study deeply, wrote a bit of advise that never really hit home until now. He says “sit with others, speak to others, listen to others as if you know that these are their last moments, and they do not”.

Yours was a good life Brother. Yours was a good death.