Death and Grieving

Death and Grieving

An Online Exclusive  

One aspect of life is that you have to deal with death. It could be watching it on the news, reading the obituaries in the newspapers, or dealing with a personal loss. Death is inevitable and there’s no escaping it. The story of immortals is just that, stories. Your loved ones, your heroes, your antagonists, and you are all going to die someday. It literally frightens some people to their very core.

I remember when I did my first investigation at the Sugar Hill Inn, Paul Hayes from the Littleton Record was there to do an article on us and what we do. He asked Nancy why she does this, that being a paranormal investigator.

“Probably because I’m scared of death,” was her reply.

I think it’s normal to be scared of death, because if you take a moment and look at everyone in your lives, all your loved ones, there’s a chance that you will see them die before you do. Do you ever think of that? Do you ever just look at everyone who has been a part of your life and just think that? What happens to you? I get sad. I used to get sick to my stomach, literally, when thinking about my grandfather passing. As my frequent readers know, he did die in October.

Dealing with his death has been surprisingly a lot easier than I thought it was going to be, because I thought life was going to end after his life did. It didn’t. I’m still here, my family is still here (minus him) and life is still going on. That doesn’t mean I don’t have moments of turmoil where all I want is him to come back, but you can’t bring back the dead. Nobody is a Dr. Frankenstein.

Just today as I write this (I’m not sure when I’m going to put this on my website), my Aunt Helen past away. That’s two deaths in a matter of almost six months. That can impact someone, but we expected their deaths. Deaths where you know it’s going to happen are a lot easier to deal with than a death that just happens out of the blue. We’ve had that happen and it’s the only death so far in the family where I cried right when I heard the news. But why couldn’t I cry when my grandfather passed away?

It’s probably because I didn’t have weeks to grieve, I had years to grieve. What my family and I were doing was literally watching my grandfather die before our very own eyes. I’m sure all of us wanted to do something, but we couldn’t. Death had its vice grip on him and all we could do is wait until it happened. That’s sad and I’m sure it made us feel terrible. It made me feel terrible, because here I am watching a guy I considered to be like Superman mixed with Batman (which would create a strong as steel, stubborn as hell mixture) just sit there in his chair all day long, waiting to pass on. That will make anyone grieve and feel like you’re on the verge of tears.

Still, almost six months later, I feel like he’s still here. I treat it as if he’s still here. Instead of talking about him in the past tense, I talk about him in a present tense. My grandmother keeps telling me its unhealthy to think like that and I just have to accept that he’s gone. I know he’s gone, but maybe thinking like this is keeping me sane? I don’t know. Maybe it hasn’t hit me fully, because if I read something and think he would like it, I go out to tell him and he’s not there. “Oh yeah,” is all I can say.

Just like today, my mother started crying and almost screaming, “Why her?” referring to my Aunt Helen. I told her that cancer, which she died from, doesn’t care if a person is nice or meant a lot to anyone. That if she would have stayed alive, then it would eat her into agony. It’s a good thing that she went out pain free rather than suffering. People should really compare and contrast death. If your loved one or a friend has an incurable disease and is suffering, do you want to see them suffer or pass on pain free? It’s easy to say that you want them to stay, but if staying means years or decades of chronic suffering then I’d rather pick death. Because in some cases death is the only way to solace.

I’m going to wrap this up because it’s late and I actually have an investigation tomorrow. There is no right way to grieve about death. You can yell to the heavens above or just smile and remember the good times, because whatever works for you should be good enough. And if all this stuff that I write about isn’t true and there’s no afterlife, then just remember this saying: nobody is really gone if you keep them alive in your memories.