The First Death

In his poem, “A Refusal to Mourn,” Dylan Thomas said, “After the first death, there is no other.” He was writing about a child who burned to death in the bombing of London during World War II. In addition to the child’s death, Dylan might also have been referring to the death of his childhood belief in life’s innocence and that everyone lived a happy existence into ripe, old age. 

After the Funeral, There's the Quiet

            Today I’m thinking about Emily Rapp Black’s experience after her two-year-old infant son Ronan died, as well as about people I’ve loved who died in April — my wife Evelyn, John’s wife Anne, and Judy’s husband John. I hold them in my heart, along with those of you who also lost loved ones this month. Each year, this month of death makes us moody, sometimes snarly, especially when we think about what could have, should have, been.

Artifacts Left Behind

When a loved one dies, possessions are left behind and we have to decide what to keep and toss. While many possessions hold fond memories, some do not. A few hold special meaning, are symbolic of pivotal events in our life, or just hold something crucial of the other person’s spirit.

            One of Ev’s pottery bowls had me in this quandary.

Listening to Anger

Journal entry 13

When I’m out on errands in the morning, Marie spots me in a store. A longtime friend, Marie lost her thirty-eight-year-old husband a couple of years ago. She asks what seems to be the question of the week for everyone.

“How are you doing with your anger?”

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The Reality of Finality

When grief comes, the world changes forever.

Commonalities of Grief

All grief is the same, and each grief is different.

If you haven’t experienced the death of someone close, you don’t know how devastating and pervasive grief is. It affects everything. It changes everything.

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Death of a Child

Book: Still Point of the Turning World, Emily Rapp

            Emily Rapp’s son Ronan died before his third birthday. I knew of Emily through one of her friends, so I won’t pretend to say that I understand what she feels or thinks about the loss of her child. I lost my wife early. There are similarities, but there are also significant differences.

            The cause of Ronan’s death was Tay-Sachs, a genetic defect that kills every baby born with it within the first four years of life. Over the months, the infants increasingly lose their ability to see, hear, feel, touch, move, and breathe. There is no treatment and no cure. Soon after Ronan was born, he began to die.

The Grave

Why did I take a detour when I was passing through Ohio to find where Cathy was buried? What did I expect?

When I found her grave, I knew. Seeing her name on the tombstone confirmed that she was dead at age 19 from a cycling accident. She was no longer somewhere undefined in the world, but physically here.

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Unbounded by Joy: Cathy McCambridge

August 19

Her joy is what touched us the most, a pure happiness that flowed around her and made everyone smile. We were college students from around the country studying at Chautauqua, New York for four weeks. Her smile was infectious, she sang with passion, and I found excuses to be near her.

Not long after returning home that summer, we received word that Cathy had been killed by a car in a cycling accident.

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Dying Young

July 15

We think it’s a tragedy when anyone dies before he or she is 80 because that’s what we've been taught by society, and this seems to be the expectation in the developed world where modern medicine has solved a host of problems that would have killed us a century ago.

My wife died suddenly in her 40s from a heart problem we didn’t know about. Her doctors had never cautioned us, and it felt wrong because I seldom heard about people dying that young. 


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