Let Death Remind You of Your Life Again

Photo by Aron Visuals on Unsplash

“I can’t believe you’re here,” says my friend Andy, minutes away from the moment when his father’s body will be lowered into the ground on a frigid Monday in December.

I’d flown 2,000 miles through the night. My brain searched for the truest response.

“I love you.” Emphasis on love.

As in, My friend, where else would I be?

It’s a Saturday afternoon two days prior, and the day before Dan’s birthday. We’re up at our place on the coast where we bask in our alone-time together like cats stretching in the sun.

A text from Andy interrupts our silence. This is the friend with whom I was a rambunctious twenty-year-old and who is now about to turn fifty-five as I did a few weeks back. The friend who is a realist with a great sense of humor, and impatient about imperfection, and generous with his heart and his mind. The friend who never forgets a milestone and remembers all the details about my family members and my work. The friend I profiled in my most recent book on adulting, in the section on the profound power of close friends.

I read Andy’s text.

“Happy early birthday to Dan — just arrived in Chicago to visit my Dad, but he passed away this evening before I arrived.”

My vagus nerve gives off a pain deep inside my groin. I lost my dad in my late twenties, which cast me adrift, and when I searched for a mooring the silence of friends who feared saying or doing the wrong thing made for a lonely harbor. That experience taught me to be the friend who will talk about death and dying and grief, not just in the moment but in the lonely months and bewildering years that may come.

_____

The next day is Sunday and Dan’s birthday. My phone lights with another text from Andy. In the Jewish tradition, his father’s body is to be buried right away. He sends me details for the in-person service which will be at noon on Monday in Skokie, IL, as well as a corresponding Zoom link.

We’re going, my heart informs me.

Dan drives the three and a half hours home from our love nest. I book an 11:45 p.m. redeye to O’Hare. We go out to dinner with the family for Dan’s birthday. Hours later I board a plane, recline my airplane seat as far as it will go, and try for a couple hours of sleep.

We land in Chicago at 5:30 a.m. local time. I exit through the jet bridge and blink at the brightness of an airport coming to life in an early morning that is still nighttime for me.

Today, Andy will support his widowed mother, his three children, and his three siblings while I show up to bear witness to friendship, love, and time. Back when I first met Andy, I could easily pull all-nighters, and even at forty I could still handle them. But now at fifty-five, a sleep debt grabs me like a Sumo wrestler and throws me to the ground. It’s more than six hours until the service so I’ve booked a hotel room near the funeral home. I prod my roller bag along through the enormous airport, as if it is a small child, and follow the signs for ground transportation.

I’m almost at the big set of glass doors that open to the outside of the airport where I intend to speed away in a Lyft. But a large sign tells me that Lyft and Uber cars are actually available next door in terminal one, whereas I am in terminal two, apparently.

A security guard walks past. I ask how long a walk it is to the ride share cars. “Well,” she begins. “It’s unfortunate that you’re already out here because you’ll need to go back up and…” My mind stops listening. My legs are like petulant toddlers that whine silently at the thought of having to turn around.

I continue my quest. According to the sign, taxis are right outside. The glass doors to the outside world slide apart and I pull my roller bag into the pre-dawn winter morning. The frigid air presses itself against my face like a butter knife trying to spread cold icing smooth and thick across the top of a warm chocolate cake. I draw my heavy fleece shawl tighter around my neck, grab for the knit gloves I’ve stuffed into the pockets, but before putting them on I check my phone. The temperature is 17 degrees. I don’t have a hat. I don’t wear hats. They squash my hair so much that I don’t feel like myself when I wear one. I wish I had one now.

A small tollbooth-sized taxi stand is right in front of me. A sign says “Line up here” near barricades meant to organize travelers into a queue. But there are no travelers. No attendant in the little hut. No taxis. I pull my roller bag thirty feet in one direction and then come back to my starting point and walk fifty feet in the other direction. Still no one. The one thing you can count on at an airport is taxis. Isn’t it? My head protests What is happening?

I need a bed. I need a bed in a hotel room for the hours between now and the noon service. I need a Lyft but it is one terminal over and for reasons I cannot understand there seem to be no taxis at Chicago’s O’Hare Field early on a Monday morning. My ears start to burn in the cold.

I see a person coming toward me. She is portly and smoking and has a badge banging on her jacket zipper which is pulled up to within an inch of her chin. I wonder if she knows a thing or two about taxis. But as she nears, I decide that, no, taxis are not her job, and she is on her cigarette break, and I do not need to make myself her problem.

I wander up and down the silent pavement again, muttering and dragging my roller bag. In the distance are two islands for drive-up-traffic where families and friends pick up travelers, but there are no taxis out there either. I give up now, spin on my heels, and tell my body that we’re going to go to terminal one which is where the Lyft cars are promised to be.

Just then, in my peripheral vision I catch a flash of bright orange. It’s a man wearing a reflective vest sprinting toward me from the maze of passenger lanes. He catches my eye and says “Taxi?” I nod and thank him. He leaps into the toll-booth where he picks up a walkie talkie and says, “We need one at two.” I presume I must look old to him, because he asks with undue kindness whether I might prefer to wait for the taxi inside. I take him up on his offer. Five minutes later, a cab arrives. I climb in. The driver and I exchange few words. I scroll my phone. I ponder that it feels strange to be fifty-five when I am accustomed to being so much younger.

In twenty-two minutes, it’s 6:30 a.m. and I’m at my hotel in Skokie. I’ve used an app to check-in, so all I need to do is walk straight to my room and unlock the door by holding my phone up to a gizmo above the handle. Inside, the television screen sports the enthusiastic message “Hi, Julie.” I turn it off. Close the blinds. Take off my shoes and jeans. Pull my bra out from under my thick grey sweater. Put on my flannel pajama bottoms. Set up my CPAP machine and fill it with water. Plug in my computer and phone. Put my phone on Do Not Disturb. Set an alarm for 11am. Pull the CPAP onto my face. Crawl into bed. Press my head into two pillows while grasping a third like a panda bear hugging a tree. Will myself to sleep. Wake only once to pee, which at my age and stage is beating the odds entirely.

_____

Another friend of Andy’s and mine picks me up at my hotel for the short drive to the Jewish funeral parlor. This friend lives near me in California, but he happens to be visiting the north shore of Lake Michigan one town over because his own mother is in the ICU there. It’s a painful coincidence. Yet I’m so glad for his presence. Because without him I would be here alone, fumbling about and lingering at the edges while trying to be present for Andy.

We arrive, sign the guest book, and enter the sanctuary where chairs are pressed together in tight rows. I recognize no other faces in the crowd. I find a coat rack and peel my fleece shawl from my body. We seat ourselves about halfway back. I choose to sit partially on the empty seat next to me so that my ample flesh does not press into the body of my slender friend.

Near the front of the room, a side door opens and the family processes in. Andy is near the front with his three children and wife in tow, followed by each of his three siblings and their families, and their mother. I count the heads and am struck that a man and woman fell for each other close to sixty-four years ago, and now here are four children, eleven grandchildren, and one baby great-grandchild to show for it. I wonder whether my two children will ever have children of their own, and how miraculous it must feel to look around and see a brood of humans and know that these people exist because we fell in love.

The rabbi begins. The cantor sings. The family members tell their stories in eulogy. Every now and then I crane my neck to try to see Andy’s face, but I can’t get the right angle. The lone great-grandchild starts to whimper in lamentation, which feels right and proper at a funeral service for a beloved, and I nod to the baby girl thinking we’re all as sad as you are sweet little one but custom says only people your age may express it publicly. After many patient moments, her dad carries her out of the sanctuary in his Baby Bjorn.

The service comes to a close and I watch Andy get to his feet at the end of the long line of family who will go out the same door through which they entered. I look past the heads of other guests and finally get a proper glimpse of my friend. His shiny shoes. His elegant pants. His round glasses pressed against his face. His smart wool coat. His scarf neatly tucked inside his lapels. His reticence atop his pain.

My second friend and I exit into the frigid afternoon. We’re given a neon orange placard for the dashboard and a tiny pumpkin orange flag with a magnetic base which we are to put on the roof of the car, and we’re told to put on our hazards and high beams. All of this to alert commuters mid-day on a Monday outside Chicago that a funeral is happening and please just wait for us to get where we need to go. We return to the rental car where we sit and wait. I rub my hands together as the car warms up. The hearse begins to drive away. Other cars fall in line behind it. Twenty cars go before us, and then we get the signal that it’s our turn to add ourselves to the procession.

The drive to the cemetery is five minutes, tops. We slowly snake through town, going through red lights and making left turns without worrying about someone hitting us, interrupting our flow, or getting angry. We enter the cemetery and process along a narrow meandering lane. Up ahead on the right is a low grassy rise, a small canopy covering about twenty-four chairs in four rows, and a freshly dug grave with its dirt piled up in a mound to the side.

The line of twenty cars in front of us pulls over one by one alongside the grass on the right side of the lane. We are directed to keep going, however, and so we pull up just behind the hearse, forming a second column of cars banking the left side of the lane. I don my gloves and scarf, exit the vehicle, gather myself up by wrapping my fleece shawl more tightly around me.

Then I spot Andy. He’s standing fifteen feet from me on the grass alongside the car immediately to my right, and he’s looking off to the distance. A great distance. As if looking for a horizon. My heart yearns to call out to him, but I want to give him space to figure out all the things he must have on his mind in this moment. I am not here for me. I am here to stand watch over my friend. I know he will see me when he needs to.

Inside the car that stands between me and Andy is his mother. Her platinum hair is coiffed, her clothes are stylish, her lipstick is perfect, and she wears on her beautiful face a look of incredulity bordering on irritation at the fact that God or the universe or whatever she believes is in charge of things has taken her beloved from her.

Suddenly, she looks out through the car window and sees me standing there and her eyes light with recognition. I’ve seen her maybe five or ten times over the thirty-five years I’ve known her son. Still, she recognizes me. I put my hand up and offer a gentle smile.

Andy ducks down into the car to tell his mother something, so I can no longer see his body. Then he stands again, surveys the cars in the long line behind his, turns and looks in my direction, sees me, and blinks.

We come toward each other and embrace in the middle of the lane for longer than is customary. Soon his wife and three children appear. I look them each in the eye and call them by name and hug them one by one. I get the name of his youngest wrong. I explain it away as the complications of the day, but secretly I worry that I’m getting dementia.

_____

In the Jewish tradition, they bury their own. This means that the mourners fill the grave rather than leave that final task to laborers. But first we gather for a short service at the graveside. My other friend and I stand at the back of the canopy, behind the chairs holding family. His pants are thin. His tall strong legs are shaking in the cold. He came to visit his mother in an ICU one town over, and now he’s here in a cemetery at a service for someone else’s parent. I clasp my body to his in solidarity, inevitability, and grief.

As the officiant speaks I reflect on my own mortality. I realize that I’m of an age when parents die and yet our own children may still be struggling to emerge from the nest. I admonish myself for once thinking that fifty-somethings were old, because all that feels old about me are the muscles, cartilage, skin, and bones that house my spirit, which nods with a deepening knowing about what I want from life and what matters to me. My self tells myself that in this way aging is good, even if it comes with tremendous uncertainty except for the certainty of death itself. That even as we know we have fewer days remaining than we’ve already spent, we finally know who we are – a feeling I wouldn’t trade for all the taut skin, faux confidence, and endurance of twenty.

Andy and his family members each take a shovel to the mound of fresh dirt, and once, twice, three times, deposit clumps of earth onto the casket of their beloved. Soon the family are done with their shoveling and we friends are invited to participate in the work. My other friend and I stand in line. Andy and his twenty-something son come over to us. The son’s face is chapped red and a droplet of fluid hangs off the end of his nose like a tiny icicle in the making. I reach my mittened hand out to absorb it. He smiles.

Andy, our mutual friend, and I chuckle about our age and the onset of frailties and the increasing frequency of life’s dark challenges. About how to manage children, and elderly parents, and work, and love, and time. “We’ll never again be as young as we are today,” I say, smiling, stamping my feet, and rubbing my hands together. It feels like the voice of my older self sending us all a reminder.

_____

We drive to Andy’s sister’s house for the Shiva service, known as the repast or the wake in other religious traditions. The crowd is large. I feel a bit lost, not knowing where to stand, and knowing so few people, and not wanting to hog time with my dear friend. But my flight home is not until 8 p.m. so I’m in no hurry. And after an hour or so, the crowd thins. I chat with Andy’s brother, himself a cantor who works hard to help a congregation come to terms with what God is and isn’t. I chat with Andy’s twenty-something son and Andy’s mother. His mother says “I can’t believe you wrote such nice things about Andy in your book.”

It’s Andy’s birthday tomorrow, so on a day that is about the death of the father he adored I nevertheless seize this opportunity to center him for just a moment. I tell his mother precisely what I think of her son. Of his profound thoughtfulness, his unwavering ability to remember the small things that matter in a friend’s life, the deep loyalty and care.

I look over at Andy and catch his face bashful as I regale the tale of him to his mother. She grins a wry lipsticked smile framed by her gorgeous platinum hair and seems to feel the deep satisfaction that comes from having raised a verifiably wonderful human being. In that moment, Andy and I are like twenty again, and our lives are entirely in front of us.

_____
As I mentioned, the second friend, who was my companion at the service and the graveside was already in town because his mother was lying in an ICU one town over. He sped from the Shiva to be with her and with his own children who were en route from California. As I drafted this for you, his mother passed away. As I finished this for you, he delivered a eulogy which I watched on video. Another fifty-five year old coming to terms with profound loss. Another fifty-five year old burnishing his copper dreams for the years he hopes will come.

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