Show Up for Goodbye

A year ago today, I saw death in its unaltered state. The rigor and the cold, but also the solemn and the natural intimacy of lifelessness.

When my partner Jim’s phone rang at 3 a.m., we’d both said the same thing: “This is it.”

Jim’s father had just died, at home as he wanted.

Jim got dressed and I got dressed and Jim looked at me like I was sleep walking. “You’re coming along?”

Jim knows I have an uncomfortable relationship with death. When my husband died, I was only nineteen, and when I was told I couldn’t see his body, it instilled in me a weird fear of death and dead bodies. But having an uncomfortable relationship with death doesn’t stop me from being an advocate of saying goodbye to loved ones’ physical bodies when possible. I’ve learned it’s a difficult but necessary part of grief, and I couldn’t miss the chance to say goodbye to Jim’s father—who always treated me like family—and support Jim’s mother.

Jim’s father had been under hospice care for a few weeks, so his death wasn’t a surprise. But hospice is its own kind of limbo, isn’t it? It’s crowded with feelings, but offers no crystal ball to tell us how we’ll feel when that life is actually over.

Called “anticipatory grief,” it’s like riding a roller coaster for the first time. Perhaps you prepare by watching videos. You can see how the cars creep up and up and up before they tip over into a chaos of turns and twists, but no matter how you think you might respond, until you actually ride it to the end, you can’t know what it will feel like.

This is true of each and every death we experience. How I felt after my husband’s death wasn’t the same as after my father’s death or my grandmothers’, aunts’, friends’, or even my dogs’ and cat’s. Each death is unique, and we do ourselves an emotional disservice if we train ourselves to think grief should always be the same. There’s no one and done in grief.

Say goodbye to your loved ones if you can, my friends. Don’t let anyone tell you that you “shouldn’t.” Take in their physical body and remember the best things about them; the reasons you love them.

I know this could be difficult if not impossible for people whose relationships are irreparably damaged, although maybe you need to see for yourself that they’re actually dead. There’s nothing wrong with that, either.

Seeing Jim’s father moments after his death, and being in the presence of his son, daughter, son-in-law, and wife, I felt an intimacy I’d never experienced; a different kind of goodbye.