Releasing the Elephant in the Room

For years now, people close to me have suggested I start a blog. I write for a living and found every excuse I could to avoid it:

• I write and edit all day; it’s the last thing I want to do in my spare time
• I don’t have anything relevant to share
• I’ll never keep up with it; I can’t tell you how many diaries I started and abandoned as a child

You get the idea. I was good at coming up with excuses. Was. Past tense.

I find myself in a different position now. I have so much I want to say I’m not sure where to start. But I’m also not sure it matters, as long as I start somewhere. So here I am.

Nearly a year ago, my mother passed away. She left this earthy realm after a three and a half year battle with stage IV endometrial cancer. She was 62, but so many years wiser. Not that it really matters, because — as I frequently remind people — cancer doesn’t discriminate. It takes the old, the young, the wise, the inexperienced, the poor and the wealthy. Neither death nor disease discriminate. It happens all the time: naturally, unnaturally … death happens. And we, as a society, have a very difficult time talking about it.

I want to talk about it.

I want to talk about the hole it leaves in a person’s heart, and the memories that, if we allow them to, fill that hole over time. I want to talk about the ways our loved ones stay with us even after they’ve left this physical plane. I want to talk about grief and how it impacts a person, and how we can use it as an opportunity to grow.

For so long, we’ve shoved death, grief and all the other emotions that come with it aside. It’s a taboo topic, which is ridiculous when you think about it. Death is something that happens to us all. Some of us, like my mom, just happen to have a better idea of when it will occur. And not talking about it doesn’t benefit anyone — those who are dying, nor those who are left behind.

So let’s talk about it.

Let’s talk about who stays beside you when someone dies, who abandons you, and how you can’t predict who those people will be.

Let’s talk about the vast range of emotions you feel in the days leading up to a death, during the death itself, and in the days — the lifetime — that follows.

Let’s talk about how death makes you question everything you thought you knew about life and what you want.

The subject of death is not taboo. Let’s talk.