Death Is Life

Death Is Life

People talk about it like it’s one event. One moment. One phone call. One funeral. One “I’m so sorry,” and then time does what time does.

That’s not how it’s been in my life.

In my world, death has had different faces. Different temperatures. Different weights. Some deaths hit like a slammed door. Others seep in like water through a crack, slow and steady, until the whole foundation shifts.

Every single time, I’ve had to reach for the same two tools: courage and fortitude.

Not the kind that makes you look brave in public. The kind you use when you’re alone, when the house is quiet, and you still have to keep breathing.

When I was 25, my husband died.

Nothing prepares you for that. Not love. Not faith. Not age. Not maturity. At 25, you don’t lose a spouse the way older people do. You lose your future in one clean cut. You lose the person who was supposed to grow old with you, not ahead of you.

I don’t need to dress that up. There’s no “at least” that makes it smaller. No neat line that makes it meaningful on command.

There was before.
Then there was after.

And after required something I didn’t know I had: the ability to keep living when my life no longer looked like my life.

People think grief is mostly sadness. It isn’t. Grief is logistics. Paperwork. Decisions. Silence. A bed that feels too big. A future you can’t picture because the person who held it with you is gone.

That kind of death forces courage on you. You don’t get to vote. You either keep going or you don’t.

And if you keep going, you learn that fortitude isn’t a feeling. It’s a decision you remake daily.

Some days you remake it with prayer.
Some days with numbness.
Some days with grit and clenched teeth.

But you remake it.

A few years later, my brother died.

And I had to clean up after it. Emotionally and physically.

Back then, there weren’t companies you could call to handle what death leaves behind. No uniforms. No calm voices. No buffers.

There was just you. The scene. The reality. The awful intimacy of it.

That kind of loss doesn’t just break your heart. It changes your nervous system. It teaches your body things your mind would rather never know.

People will say, “I can’t imagine.”

Sometimes I want to answer, “Good. Don’t.”

Because once you’ve seen what death does up close, innocence doesn’t come back. You don’t get stronger. You get heavier. More aware of how thin the wall is between ordinary life and catastrophe.

And still, you keep going.

There have been other deaths that demanded courage and fortitude in a different way.

The shooting death of my night manager at my bail bond office.
The shooting death of my good friend and her boyfriend at my son’s day care.

Even writing those sentences carries an edge. Violent death doesn’t just take a person. It steals safety. It rewires how you see doors, parking lots, time of day, strangers. Ordinary places become “before it happened” places.

That grief isn’t soft. It’s sharp. It has corners. It brings anger with it. Confusion. Questions you can’t answer no matter how many times you circle them.

And the courage required isn’t the courage to cry.

It’s the courage to not let the world turn you into someone you don’t recognize.

It’s the courage to stay human.

Now I’m facing a different kind of death.

The slow one.
The long goodbye.

Watching my mother fade.

She’s still here, but not fully. She’s becoming less than who she was. That sounds cruel, but it isn’t. It’s accurate.

I’m watching her world narrow. Her capacity shrink. The spark dim.

And the part I didn’t expect is this: I’m watching my hope die, too.

Not the hope that she’ll live forever. I understand bodies. I understand age. I understand limits.

I mean a different hope.

The hope of a deeper connection.
The hope that conversations would finally go where they never went.
The hope that time would soften what life didn’t.

When a parent dies suddenly, the pain is a blow.

When a parent dies slowly, the pain is layered.

One of those layers is grieving what never happened while still showing up for what is happening.

There’s no card for that. And no fix.

No one warns you about this part.

When your mother nears the end, you don’t just lose her. You lose your place in the line.

Living history turns into memory. Stories loosen their anchors. And you realize, slowly, that you’re becoming the older generation.

You are now the keeper.
The witness.
The one who can say, “That’s how it really was.”

That knowledge has weight. The kind you feel late at night when people who once felt permanent start becoming past tense.

And it changes you.

Life isn’t the opposite of death. It’s the slow walk toward it.

Some lives end cleanly. Most don’t. Most end unfinished. Conversations not had. Truths not spoken. Repairs not made. That’s not tragedy. That’s reality.

Death completes the story. Not because it’s kind, but because it’s final. It closes the book whether the ending satisfies you or not.

Waiting for resolution is a fool’s bargain. Waiting for people to become who you needed them to be is how you waste the time you have left.

Life doesn’t promise wholeness. It promises movement.

The courage now isn’t hope. It’s clarity.

Clarity that love doesn’t require understanding.
Clarity that presence matters more than meaning.
Clarity that some relationships end in silence.

Watching my mother fade isn’t teaching me how to save her. It’s teaching me how to stand without illusion.

She will leave incomplete.
So will I.
So will everyone.

That’s the point.

Life is unfinished by design. Death is the period at the end of the sentence. Not poetic. Not fair. Necessary.

I don’t need comfort from this.

I need honesty.

And this is it.

P.S.
I’m not blind enough to think death is the final word. It isn’t. What ends is the body, the voice, the chance to fix what was broken here. What continues is the spirit. Not as memory. As life, unbound by flesh and time.

That completion doesn’t belong in this story. This story is about the cost of living while death is still in the room.

The rest is infinite.

And it can wait.