Death doesn’t discriminate between the sinners and the saints

This evening I learned my last living grandparent has passed away. My entire family knew this was going to be happening soon, as my grandmother’s health had been on a steady decline for the past five years. “It would be any minute now” would be the phrase that was often softly spoken when her name came about. And though this was not a surprise, it was a surreal experience to hear of her death.

My mother was on the phone with her sister-in-law, and her voice was incredibly calm. She as like “Oh, she has passed away? Yesterday at 5? Okay I will let everyone know, thank you.” It was almost as if she was talking about last night’s dinner, even more far away and removed than usual when someone had passed away. When she hung up, I asked “Someone passed away?” hoping it wouldn’t be who I thought it was.

“My mom.”

That’s what my mother said, and in that moment I could see her own memories of her own mother passing through her eyes. This was not a surprise, but even so it was a shock. A woman who lived is now gone. A woman who loved, cared, and lived is now not. Why is that?

Soon, everything is in chaos. A moment that was once completely still, as if everything is in slow motion, has now been pulled to reality. It is 10pm and people are coming over, people are calling, people are trying to comfort. How do you comfort someone who’s mother was once there and now is that? How do you once have a person and then not?

Death. A soul that was once there and now is not. A soul that has people reaching for it, wanting to be near it, wanting to have it back, wondering how to revive it — gone. What does it mean that a soul leaves?

This is even more important in light of recent shootings and losses. Those are lives taken away by the hand of others — a death unforeseeable, unforgivable. What do we do when these deaths impact our lives, when these deaths are at the fault of our own society, the thoughts, actions, and prejudices of our own neighbors?

Often religions, ideologies, spiritualities, they all try to answer these questions. Where does a person, a soul, go when the body is left on Earth?

Maybe a different question might be: how do the people whose souls are still on Earth deal with the suffering and loneliness after a soul leaves them?