THE WIND PHONE
Knowing about Grief Could Make it Much Easier
Could we lessen the pain of loss if we taught about death and dying?
I was 16 years old when they died.
My grandfather lived to be 89 years old and had a long, healthy life. When he turned 80, he stopped taking his daily two-mile walks to town, and he began to fail. First, his memory started to deteriorate. Then, he had bouts of instability and dizziness, resulting in several falls. At that point, his health deteriorated very rapidly, and his death was imminent.
Mark was a classmate who enjoyed riding his snowmobile on farmland in northeastern PA. One winter afternoon, he took his snowmobile out for a drive and wandered into a field sectioned off with electrified barbed wire. When he hit the wire at a racing speed, his body was ripped open. He died in the early winter months of his junior year of high school.
I was ill-equipped to handle either death.
With no skills in hand, I walked through the rituals of my town: three days of wakes followed by a morning funeral mass and burial.
My grandfather’s services were Roman Catholic, and my friend Mark’s were Russian Orthodox. I was raised Roman Catholic, so those ceremonies were more familiar to me…
