We buried my brother-in-law last week.
In March he found out he had stage-four liver and gall bladder cancer. He lived 59 days after receiving that news -- 59 days! He and my sister were just about to retire and move to Gentry.
Quite often, our plans do not coincide with God's. He was buried in the Springtown Cemetery -- where many of my other family members lie -- on a beautiful spring day.
On such days, death seems so alien and out of place, yet there we were, gathered around his grave to say our final good byes. My heart breaks for my sister and the children and grandchildren who will miss him so much.
The first family death that I remember was my Grandpa Tom's. I was only 6 years old, so I didn't fully grasp what was happening, but I could feel the sadness in my mother and grandmother. Then, a few years later, my Grandma passed and this one devastated me. My Grandma was my rock. I was very close to her and her death hit me like a ton of bricks. I will never forget standing in the chapel at the Gravette Hospital and hearing the words, "I'm sorry, she's gone," fall from Dr. McCollum's lips like stones on my heart. That feeling stayed with me for weeks and I began to think that life would never hold any joy again. She died on Dec. 12 and, when Christmas came, I had no interest in the holiday at all. We always opened our presents on Christmas Eve, but that year my mother brought my gifts to me about noon on Christmas Day and made me open them. I just didn't care. Eventually, my melancholy passed and I became a normal child again, but I cannot forget how dark those days were for me.
I know we have all heard the old cliché about time healing all wounds, but I have come to believe that it doesn't.
For a lot of years after my grandmother's death, I was fortunate and didn't lose anyone very close to me. But when I was 36 years old, my mother died. She also had cancer and was given just a few months to live.
That entire time still seems to me like a bad dream. I just couldn't wrap my mind around the fact that my mother was going to die and, for a long time, I tried to ignore the fact and carry on as if nothing had changed.
But she also passed away on a beautiful May afternoon, and I was again plunged into debilitating grief. And although it has been many years since her death, time has not healed the wounds at all. I have just learned not to think about it. Not that I don't think about my mom, because I do, nearly every day. I just don't dwell on that period of her illness through her funeral and the weeks immediately following.
If I let myself, even now, I can be plunged again into sadness so deep that it is hard to pull myself out of it. So I try not to think about her final days, and instead focus on the memories that make me smile, and the fact that I will see her again someday.
At this point in my life, death has taken many more family and friends, and sorrow for these losses always seems to lurk just beyond the surface. Some of them were taken much too soon, and these are the losses that are the most difficult to bear. I look at their families and see the holes left by their absence -- holes that can never be filled. I look at grandchildren who never knew the grandparent who passed too soon and don't know what they are missing, but I know what they are missing. I guess it is a blessing that they don't realize their loss.
I certainly didn't mean to write such a dreary column, so let me lighten the mood a bit. I have many happy memories of the loved ones I have lost, and I have shared many of those memories here in this column. I realize how fortunate I was to have had them all in my life.
Even today, many years after the passing of my parents, I dream about them. Sometimes in those dreams we talk about things that we never got around to talking about before, and sometimes we don't talk at all; I just enjoy what feels so much like their presence. When I wake from these dreams, I feel almost like I have seen them in reality and that we have had a good visit.
I hope these dreams never stop. I try my best to keep their memories alive with my children and grandchildren by telling them about my parents and their lives and what they were like. We talk about the old days a lot in my family.
And, of course, the one fact that never fails to bring me peace is that I will see them again some day. The pastor at my brother-in-law's funeral reminded us that God has prepared a place for those of us who have prepared ourselves. I hope that none of us will neglect this preparation and that there will be many happy reunions in heaven. So find some time today to enjoy this fine spring day, and I hope all of your memories are happy ones!
Tamela Weeks is a freelance writer in the Gentry area. She may be reached by email at tamela.weeks@ gmail.com. Opinions expressed are those of the author.
Editorial on 05/21/2014