Death: When Breath Becomes Air

The title is mainly because I couldn't think of another poetic title.

I have been reading about death for a few years (if you recall some of the posts in my old abandoned blog). This summer, I’m continuing down that path. Because you know, death is a light summer read.....

Some of the books I'm reading are: The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. Grief is the Thing with Feathers. The Dark Interval. A Grief Observed. The Book Against Death. So I expect I'll write more about it in my blog.

However, nothing could have possibly prepared me for this paragraph by Elias Canetti. Absolutely nothing. It tore through me, fast and sharp. It hit something primal and buried. I wish my mother and I were close.

I don't think I've ever read such an intense yearning.

+++

June 15, 1942 – Five years ago today my mother died. Since then my world has turned inside out. To me it is as if it happened just yesterday. Have I really lived five years, and she knows nothing of it? I want to undo each screw of her coffin’s lid with my lips and haul her out. I know that she is dead. I know that she has rotted away. But I can never accept it as true. I want to bring her to life again. Where do I find parts of her? Mostly in my brothers and me. But that is not enough. I need to find every person whom she knew. I need to retrieve every word she ever said. I need to walk in her steps and smell the flowers she smelled, the greatgrandchild of every blossom that she held up to her powerful nostrils. I need to piece back together the mirrors that once reflected her image. I want to know every syllable she could have possibly said in any language. Where is her shadow? Where is her fury? I will loan her my breath. She should walk on my own two legs.

What scares me the most is that the date caught my attention. 2042 isn’t some distant, sci-fi future. It’s a completely plausible year for my mother to be gone. Even June 15th is a very possible day for a person to die. People die on June 15th all the time. Every year.