Life, Death, and coping

As most barnson.org readers know, my wife and I just had a baby on Saturday. We received some humorous and valuable tips to pass on to our new arrival, Joshua, when he is old enough to understand them.

It seems curious to me that, often, the greatest of joys are balanced by the greatest of sorrows.

Yesterday, Jackie Broadbent, mother of two grown daughters, wife of Lynn, aunt to my wife Christine, sister of my mother-in-law Marsha, died near Twin Falls, Idaho, in a car accident. She was broadsided and died shortly thereafter.

I always liked Jackie. She helped me with my taxes when I was younger. She helped me start my first business up in Idaho. She worked in the state tax office, and we’d drop by there from time to time when we lived locally just to say hello. She was a fat, jolly woman, who always had a good word for everyone. The first time my wife and I ever had a long kissing session was on her back porch. Waiting for her to show up, I might add 🙂 She never showed up that day; we “waited” for a very long time! We went to Christmas celebrations at her house, and performed the Nativity together down in her cellar, which remarkably resembles a cave. I used to play loudly on her piano, and smile when she’d ask me to play more. We attended her daughter’s wedding reception at her house.

We were never really close, though. I’d see her about once a year, either for a few minutes, or a day or two. And I’m really not sure how to react to this event. My mother-in-law is staying with us, and I’m certain this is very hard on her. For me, knowing Jackie’s gone fills me with a vague kind of sadness that I won’t be seeing her again. I don’t plan on attending her funeral; we have three small children who’ll be home while their mother goes, and I’ll still need to be working since money’s very tight for the next 6-8 weeks as we catch up as the paychecks start arriving in from my new job.

Death is a troubling yet poorly-understood phenomenon. Other than the narrowing of vision to a pinpoint of light, and frequently a great deal of pain, there are no consistent descriptions of what it’s like to die, although often people who have “died” for a few moments and then been revived report some kind of religions visitation that varies by faith. We don’t have any report from someone who’s been stone-dead for a month or two to tell us what it’s really like — or if there’s any existence at all. Other than birth, there’s no other experience in life so dependable for every human being on the planet.

And yet it still causes us, and those around us, grief and sorrow. Is the sorrow for the person who died, or for ourselves that we will no longer see them before it is our day, too, to pass on?