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Planning for the Inevitable
Mine and my husband’s heartfelt discussions to brace ourselves for our inevitable departure from this world and each other.
I can’t recall what I was doing when I got the message. I heard my phone buzz and gave it a quick glance to see who it was from. The text message that illuminated my screen wasn’t one that I could ever imagine.
It was my youngest: “Willow’s mom died!”
Willow and my daughter have been inseparable since high school. They have celebrated accomplishments and milestones and comforted each other through heartbreaks and life decisions gone south.
Now, the twenty-three-year-old roommates had a huge weight to carry that was heavier than anyone that age should ever have to carry.
It was just the Christmas before that Willow’s mom warmly invited our daughter for Christmas dinner when she couldn’t make it home. This same woman was preparing to watch her daughter walk down the aisle in just two weeks.
The reality was heartwrenching and merciless.
Strangely, in the span of a few days, death paid us more visits — a cousin lost to an overdose, another cousin to unknown causes, and an acquaintance’s wife to a tragic fall.
But it was maybe the details of Willow’s mom’s death that rattled my husband and me the most: Willow’s dad brought his wife her morning coffee to their room as he did every morning. When he gently nudged her, saying it was time to rise, there was no response.
Tragedy shattered their morning routine. It left us wondering, what if it had been us?
Thoughts of what that poor man must have felt when he discovered that his wife died in her sleep still haunt me months later.
Death, as natural as it may be, is an unwelcome intruder. It serves as an eerie reminder of our mortality and the delicate balance of life and death.
We haven’t been immune to death’s knock at the door, either. Between illnesses and a stroke, we’ve each heard the shuffling of those feet outside the door, waiting to see if the knocking would be answered.
