#bezo lore

My grandfather on my dad's side died before I was born, in fact, I was named after him in some kind of tribute. I don't know how old he was.

My grandmother on my father's side died when I was six or so. We only met a handful of times. I have no memory of her. I don't know how old she was.

My grandfather on my mother's side died when I was only eleven, a year after having a stroke that left him hospital bound for the remainder of his life, a second stroke finishing the job. He was ninety years old.

My father died when I was nineteen years old, through complications from his diabetes, though I must admit that I spent many years blaming myself for his heart attack. I had spent a month recovering from mononucleosis, and my university work had suffered as a result. He told me that if I got kicked out of school, I would be kicked out of the house as well. And then I got the letter. And my father kicked me out. But he died before he told anyone that he had. So, I stayed.

We had been avoiding each other; he was angry and disappointed at me for my obvious failings as a son, while I locked myself in the computer room, trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life.

I heard him die. I didn't realize that's what it was, it sounded like a snore. But it was a death rattle. I remember rolling my eyes at my old dad's ability to sleep through anything. But I had other things to think about, more important than my dad's tendency for mid-afternoon naps. I had no idea he was never going to wake up. He was fifty four years old.

My grandmother on my mother's side died when I was in my mid-twenties. Something inside her, possibly an artery, though more likely a vein, burst. My mother and I rushed to the hospital to be at her side. A Catholic priest came in to give her last rites, which I remember being vaguely annoyed by, because my grandmother was a Lutheran. The doctors told my mom that the surgery that could repair the damage would more than likely kill her. All they could do was make her comfortable, which meant stoned out of her mind on morphine.

This was after the last rites, mind you. I sometimes wonder how hilarious it would have been for her to have survived, and boxed the ear of that impetuous priest for saving her soul in the incorrect religion. She did not survive, as it happens.

It's not like the movies, watching someone die, even in a hospital. There was no steady beep of the EKG gradually slowing and then being replaced by a piercing drone. She complained about the morphine drip not being sufficiently morphine-dripping, closed her eyes and stopped breathing. As complaints go, it's one I'll never forget. She was eighty-nine.

When I was forty-five, my brother, who is several years younger, had a heart attack. He didn't die, but, like my maternal grandfather, he'll never be the same. He has a pacemaker now, and has to follow a strict diet, which he doesn't, so, y'know, tick tick.

I've seen death; I've heard death; I've known death. Not personally, not yet, but nevertheless, I've known death well.

I've buried three dogs, two cats, and a box turtle. Not literally. They have people for that.

Now I am forty-eight. It is possible that I see fifty. It is unlikely that I see sixty. I've got an assortment of health issues that I won't bother the reader or a doctor with. Plus, I'm autistic, and apparently we tend to die young. Admittedly, that particular window seems pretty firmly shut.

I don't fear death.

To be fair, I fear dying, because I fear pain, and even though I've experienced pain at what seems to be the apex of suffering, it is entirely possible that there is more pain out there that I have not experienced. If I was the sort of person who would be kept up at night, so to speak, that thought would definitely suffice.

Despite the attempts by various figures in my life to impart one upon me, I've never held any serious belief in a soul or an afterlife. The very idea doesn't really stand up to scrutiny. I've been alive for forty-eight and a bit years. That seems like a really long time, but it's nothing at all in the face of eternity.

Eternity is a very human concept, in that it sounds good until you give it any amount of thought at all. Most people don't. That's fair. If they're planning to sing hymns to the definitely correct god on a floating cloud with all their equally yoked relatives for an infinity of years, it's not my business to try and dissuade them. I, personally, would get bored.

So yes. I have a very complicated relationship with death.

For one, thanks to the late great Sir Terrence John Pratchett (not to be confused with my cat, Sir Terrence Anaconda Pratchett), I have come to view Death as a friend. Even though he's taken so much from me. From all of us.

It's not his fault. It is the job. And we do the job ahead of us.

We are forever.