Dealing with death

There’s clearly no playbook.

Some observations after having endured the recent unexpected death of my father-in-law:

The immediacy of important decisions was overwhelming.

Within minutes of learning of his death and trying to force it to compute, we had to identify a funeral home. We had to determine if he wanted to be cremated or have a proper burial. We had to decide if we wanted to enter his apartment before he was taken away.

Do we really know what he would want? Do we allow convenience to play a role? Are any of us in any shape to make a logical decision? How do we want to remember this night?

It was all way too much for any of us to handle and we just have to hope we did the best we could with what we had at that moment.

We all deal with it in our own way

Some keep busy to fight off the raw emotion trying to emerge.

Others can’t move.

Some want to proceed ahead in order to make the pain go away.

Others want to hold on to it all in fear of forgetting.

Some are stoic.

Others are endlessly emotional.