I have been close to death since I was very young. Which isn’t to say I am sickly. No, not at all. I mean literally, I sat with the dead.
Let me explain how I got there.
My father decided to change careers in his late 30s. Not long after my birth, he enrolled in medical school. During his gross anatomy labs, the instructor told the class that if they had small children, they should bring them in during practice dissection. Children, after all, have no concept of death.
I know, I know. This sounds like a horror story. But I really didn’t have a concept of death. At all. The instructor was right.
I’d sit on a stool next to my dad, and with a heavy lisp, say, “Show me some fings, Dad.”
And he would explain to me what he was examining and the different functions of the organs in the body. Or explain what each bone in the bone boxes did. I remember very little of what this looked like. I was so young.
But I do have clear memories of my dad teaching me how to clean my hands and arms as though I was going into surgery, explaining germs to me. I remember him emphasizing how much of a gift each cadaver was. That each one represented a selfless act, and an opportunity for someone else to live. I remember staring at a model skeleton and comparing its femur to mine. Marveling that I had bone-architecture inside of me, very much alive and growing.
Somehow, all of that death translated as life, as abundance. Knowledge that keeps our human bodies functioning, growing, operating, and expanding.
As I grew, I learned death could be another thing, a devastating thing. First, through the loss of pets. And then, later, when I was 19, a new compounded grief. The loss of a peer. A friend.
Somehow, I knew before I picked up the phone. I said aloud, “Someone has died.” And then immediately dismissed myself. What a wild thing to say.
But someone had died.
We lost Richard in his sleep due to a heart defect. I loved him in that way you love your teenage friends. Before you know how to truly explain yourselves, you just see each other for what you are and could be.
Richard was a quiet giant, easily 6’5”. He was funny, but in that way where he’d wait for just the right moment to make an observational joke. He had a very clear sense of right and wrong, but liked to push the limits a little for fun. One afternoon, I jumped in the back seat of my friend’s car, and he handed me a metal coat hanger. I asked what it was for, and he told me just to wait. When we hit the highway, he opened the sliding door on his side and used the hanger to make sparks as we flew down the highway, and motioned for me to do the same.
Sometimes there was an obvious grey cloud following him. I never knew exactly why, but I had suspicions. We both grew up in very religious households, and we each had our own ways of finding small rebellion. Late one night at a party, he was sad, alone in a chair by the corner. I saw him there and stared for a while. And then silently climbed on his lap and just held him. I don’t know why I did this; I’m typically more verbal. But in that moment, it was enough to exist together.
Another time, our entire group was separated in a haunted house. Through the manufactured fog, we ran face-first into each other. I chipped the corner of my front tooth and one canine on his chin. The chip is still there. The memory became a scar for him, a slightly uneven tooth for me.
His parents let us play Radiohead at his funeral. Very unconventional for a small Baptist church. But they wanted something he loved, and they trusted us to pick it. And later, as they lowered him into the ground, I kept saying, “No, no, no, no, no,” over and over again. I don’t know why I couldn’t be quiet, but I could not. There are times I am ashamed of this memory, that I couldn’t be silent. Why did I speak and attract attention? But. No one should die so young. And I couldn’t handle it.
This was the first death of a friend I had experienced.
And it was also the first time I could no longer deny that I felt the presence of someone who had passed.
After the funeral, I returned to my home with a mutual friend. She and I sat on the porch and commented that we were so lucky it hadn’t rained. Reports had called for it. The sky looked so grey. Petrichor filled the air. And within seconds, we watched a wall of rain roll quickly down the street towards us. I felt something say, “Yes, we waited.” I turned and looked at my friend, and we both said aloud, “The rain waited.”
That week, home alone, I decided to clean. I turned Radiohead’s Kid A all the way up and threw myself on the couch. And I felt his presence, joyful, sitting next to me, soaking in the music. The room felt alive.
And I think that is the most confusing thing about grief, that sorrow and joy can coexist so fully. Grief is a son of a bitch, beautiful with memory and love, but never without at least a little edge of pain.
There is a lump in my throat as I am writing this. However. My eyes are welling with happiness, knowing he still managed to say goodbye. The power of life and all its abundance is so palpable in the face of death. And one day, if my bones end up in a bone box, the memory will remain, suspended and timeless in a chipped tooth.
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