Dennis and I just got back from a couple of days mid-state attending a funeral for his cousin, Karen. She’d been ill for a number of months and died in October, but due to our 2020 global health crisis, the ceremonies for her were postponed until now. I’d never had the pleasure of meeting her, but through stories—both from Dennis and his family, along with the service and celebration—a picture of a vibrant, active woman took shape. The service was Catholic and held all the moments you would expect a traditional service to hold. The Father officiating the service had married Karen and her husband, baptized her two daughters, and was clearly a presence in her world throughout the past decades. Listening to his eulogy, I was struck by one comment in particular: That we rejoice when a baby is born and mourn when a person dies, but instead we should be wary (he didn’t exactly say “mourn” here) when a child comes into the world and rejoice when they pass on. On a couple of levels I was seeing his point: If you’re viewing this world as a place stocked shore-to-shore with challenges and obstacles, then yes, there is caution ahead. If you view end of life through a lens of specific religions, then yes, there is a better place to go if you’ve been kind and good.

I wasn’t raised in a religion with that sort of view on endings. I actually wasn’t raised with any formal religion although my mom and dad did take me to occasional Science of Mind services, which if I was going to describe that belief system as seen through young eyes would be a kind of StarWars-ian, the force is with you, type of thing. As I grew into teenage-hood I explored all the mysticisms (reading Carlos Castenada, diving into Tarot, wanting to speak to spirits…sort of/not really) and also trying to understand what Jimmy Page and Robert Plant were writing about without getting into any Aleister Crowley–ness. (I was too squeamish to cross over into darkness.)

So Karen’s service felt like a place for me to observe a formal religious ceremony around the finality of life. The front pews holding her mom and dad, he literally bent forward in grief. The solemnity of people taking the communion or a blessing at the end. While I felt like an observer, I felt happy to be getting a certain view into this woman’s life as I looked around and saw all the adults in her life who had known her on one level or another. But there was no one there under the age of eighteen, which seemed interesting. Afterward there was a Celebration of Life at a local spot where food, drink, a slideshow, and many tales of Karen were told. There were kids here, as if the more casual setting was appropriate where the church service was too solemn. There was still a cloud covering of sadness, but the idea of her having gone to a better place continued to prevail. The stories people told in this space contained more laughter, from the nervous to the joyful. There was an ice cream station, a fully-stocked bar, comfort food. All things she loved. There was also all the messiness of emotion. Palpable anger and resigned peace from her father and mother respectively. He not hiding at all his sense of “I’m just getting through this,” while she was beatific with the memories of the last heartfelt conversations she was able to have with her daughter at the end. And what struck me as wonderful is that they both, in that moment, seemed completely at ease with letting each other have the emotions they were having along with being aware they were in it together. Of course, when the slideshow came on and the soundtrack of heartrending music played behind the photostream, I came completely undone. I have mentioned that I had never met Karen. But in these photos there was life, poignant life, while the visuals floated on a raft of music that was pure emotion. Of course I got angry at the music for flying that flag. (Folks who know me are aware of my ongoing battle with music. How when it makes me feel, I get mad. Yes, I realize there’s work to be done around that…) But interestingly, thinking about the Father’s sermon I realized this visual reminder of her life was bringing intense emotion to everyone in the room because they would never get to see her again to make new memories, take new pictures, which of course is selfish.

I don’t say that in a derogatory or negative way, just simply that we love the people we love to be in our lives. When a baby is born, it’s Yay, I get to spend time with this cutie and watch her/him grow. When a person dies, it’s Noooo, I won’t get to spend any more time with that person. Of course, we’re human, that’s how it works.

In the car on the ride home we had a few hours to catch up on podcasts and wouldn’t you know it, the RadioLab we queued up was The Queen of Dying about Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, she of the five stages of death and, separately, of grief. It’s a fascinating episode about not only how the public takes an idea and whittles it down to a pocket-size theory where it loses all nuance, but also how a woman who rose into a very prominent public figure was also so very misunderstood at the end of her life. What also really struck me about the story was how Elisabeth brought the dying into the light. When she began her practice, which today might be seen as palliative care but back in the sixties classified her activities under a more scientific rubric, she understood that dying was not discussed. That a doctor did not tell a terminal patient that they were going to die. That they were quite literally placed in the far reaches of hospitals out of view so not many people would pass their rooms. When she began to hold seminars at the hospital where she was doing her research, she got a lot of pushback from doctors and laypeople who felt the whole conversation around death was exploitive. It was meant to be so personal as to be n.e.v.e.r. talked about. But the conversational tapes she made with these folks are insightful and heartbreaking. They wonder why people won’t just talk to them about their upcoming death. They talk about feeling invisible. They wish people would stop telling them to think positively. Again, I was undone (and there was no musical soundtrack to blame this time).

Invisibility. The sense that to hear someone say, I feel seen. I feel heard; those aren’t throwaway lines, but the very essence of an ache to be a part of this world in every stage of life. A baby asks for this attention as a birthright with no sense that s/he wouldn’t get it absolutely. No reason yet to believe that sometimes that attention slips away. At what point do we start to think we’re being greedy for asking? And in a gendered way, how much earlier do females switch into that realization than males? Overall, being able to see Karen even on a screen and after she’s been gone from this earth for more than nine months, the essence of her was made visible through photos and stories and I was happy to get to know her like that even in memorium. And for her loved ones, they carry her inside themselves differently.

That night I was standing in the window of our hotel staring down from the fifth floor onto the pool area where a bunch of teenagers were having themselves a Friday night. One by one they started waving. I smiled wondering who it was for, then realized they were waving at me, standing in the window staring at them. I lifted my hand and waved back, slightly mortified at realizing I wasn’t actually invisible.