The Gift of Death

Prompt: Death

Tag: MWC Death

Birth hands us the gift of life that occasionally starts painful journeys. Death gives us a token that ends the trip and some of the pain. Annelise Lords

The Gift of Death

Birth hands us the gift of life that occasionally starts painful journeys. Death gives us a token that ends the trip and some of the pain. Annelise Lords

‘Life and death are a part of life,’ are repetitive statements attached daily to painful situations and circumstances. They are inseparable. Those two operate uniquely, unlike anyone we know.

Darkness is attached to our exit, while light follows our entry into this world.

Yet, death increases the value of life for some of us.

Humanity is unable to figure out the mystery attached to them. We know and understand the process. Each of us has a secret to our lives, and death hasn’t spoken yet.

Depending on your location, the sun might not come your way today. There are starless and moonless nights. Not for life and death. They are tireless. Abortions stop life, giving humanity some control at a cost. Wealth, knowledge and technology, etc., aids in slowing death, but nothing can stop it. Humankind assists life’s process in negative and positive ways. E.g., lack of family planning, rapes, love through sex, etc., Wars, murders, diseases, viruses, some of our choices, actions, decisions, etc., enables our demise.

Someone wise said, ‘death has causes, while life has reasons.’

According to https://www.meaningfullife.com/meaning-of-death/

While death represents the soul’s elevation to a higher level, it nevertheless remains a painful experience for the survivors.

Depending on the love and legacy left behind, death brings two kinds of pain and two kinds of joy.

1)The agony of losing someone special.

2)The comfort of understanding that death isn’t the end of a well-lived life with love, kindness, and compassion.

1)The relief that their cruelty had ended with their death. (It usually doesn’t. It often lingers, causing more damage.)

2) Delighted that their reign of terror has finally ended, opening the pathway to healing.

Each of us handles the grief of death differently.

On 26 August 1978, two days after his wife’s death from cancer, Charles Boyer took an overdose of the barbiturate Seconal. He was taken to a hospital in Phoenix but died there on the same day.

Charles Boyer is just one of the millions of humans who thought death by suicide was a better solution for problems facing them at that moment.

https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/suicide

Suicide is defined as death caused by self-directed injurious behavior with intent to die as a result of the behavior.

If Charles Boyer didn’t love his wife, would he have ended his life?

In the absence of love, kindness, and happy memories, will the agony of grief spare the ones left behind?

I got a call from one of my sisters that my mother complained of headaches and collapsed. I was at the market nearby and got to the Kingston Public hospital in minutes. I followed a nurse to a small room where she was lying on a bed.

For the first time in my 42-year-old self, I can recall touching my mother’s hand. This was a strange feeling. According to research, touch is vital for physical growth and cognitive development. My mother never gave me a hug or a gentle touch to assure me she loved me and touching her was extremely strange to me.

According to: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-020-00642-4

Interpersonal touch modulates social relationships throughout life. Tactile stimulation is a part of the repertoire of mammalian caregiving behaviors (Feldman, 2011), and touching and being touched are crucial for physiological and neurocognitive development in humans.

I held her right hand as she lay motionless on the hospital bed. My instinct responds with a prayer. The doctors came in shortly and ordered me to leave. After providing them with the necessary contact information, I left the hospital with that strange feeling attached to my heart.

My lack of emotion almost tripped me on exiting. I examined myself. None of my feelings responded. I repeated the process digging deeper within me. The strange feeling from her touch seems to block my path.

The wait was torture as I struggled with an empty feeling her touch had left with me.

That odd feeling pushed me back into a world where her viciousness towards me had no boundaries. I lacked the strength to stop myself. The beatings and pain were raw and painful in my mind as if it has just happened. I was about nine years old, and we were celebrating Jamaica’s Independence Day in August. A big feast was in process. Lots of corn were boiling in a large pot on a wood fire in the middle of the tenement we lived in.

She warned me to stay away from the fire. The flames were dying, so I fed it more sticks. She caught me in the act, ripped my clothes off, and beat me naked in front of about eight boys of various ages. Inflight to escape, I ran into the path of the fire, which overturned and burned my feet. Jesus walked on water; I treaded on fire. The remnant of the fire is still visible on my feet. That was my first introduction to ultimate pain.

Whenever she beats me, I would cry for my father. The beatings would intensify. She treated him horribly. I witness most of the abuse he endured at her hands. My dad suffered in silence from my mother’s cruelty. To save himself, he escapes to America.

Suddenly she was left alone to raise six children with no education or job. She had a nervous breakdown, and then hell moved in. Everywhere we lived, the other tenants were aware of the abuse, but no one dared interfere.

In my world, the emotional state of children is never under consideration. We were given two choices at birth.

Live or die!

I knew life. Death is a stranger that all of us must meet at some point in our lives.

As I fought my way back into reality, every wicked deed she had done to me followed me out of my subconscious, and the past replayed as if fate or destiny touched a rewind button. I managed to win many of life’s battles and owned my own business. In the process of my struggle to grow my business, a sense of obligation held on to me. She came every day and took and took and took. The sacrifices made to stay afloat wasn’t enough. I was drowning, so I had to imitate my father’s decision. I had to leave my child with her just as he left me. Amazingly, I resented him for leaving me behind.

I learn that life will find ways to retaliate against us when we lack understanding and are quick to judge. With lessons learned, the door to forgiveness will open.

While living in America, a sense of obligation bound me.

My mother was conscienceless and the first human I met that kindness had no value to. Being kind to her was an invitation for her to cheat, steal and lie to you. I have seen her in action while growing up.

I returned home to live.

The pain and inhumane treatment I endured for years at her hands haven’t left me yet.

Many things in life leave us while we are alive. Pain seems always to find a reason to stick around.

I battled with God. I knew the value of life and the respect parents deserved. I couldn’t find the love because the only thing facing me when I think of and look at my mother was pain. Not grief pain. Hatred pain. Regret pain. Lost dreams and wishes pain. The list was long.

Six hours later, and it was the eve of my twin son’s birthday, I got the call. My mother was dead!

Her death was a gift from God.

Besides me, my creator was the only one who knew I could not care for her the way a daughter should — caring for the sick demands a heart packed with love and compassion. I wasn’t mentally, emotionally, or psychologically able to do my best. Of her four children living in Jamaica, I was the only one equipped with the right resources to care for her.

So, life chose me without asking.

My God understood that if I can’t do my best, I refused the task. He didn’t judge me.

He and time are the only ones that can give humanity death, gift wrapped.

Life pursues joy, and death chases sorrow. Both have a process. I was unable to follow death’s demand.

‘Why God?’ I asked. Shouldn’t I be feeling something? You just gave me a gift. My mother was dead, and there was nothing special, shocking, or sad about her passing. Happiness was absent too.

Being a mother and understanding what she went through, I thought that would have helped me grieve.

It didn’t.

Good or bad mothers, their death should have a meaningful impact on their children and grandchildren.

I went on another expedition into my childhood, fighting anguish and regret. I found nothing heartbroken about my mother’s departure because my memory keeps adding more gasoline to the flames of hatred.

While waiting on the autopsy, I struggled with myself and the past. Death means the end. The happy memories they left behind are the lifeline that allows their loved ones to accept that death is a part of life. The happier the memories left behind, the easier it is for their loved ones to grieve and move on.

That means my sibling and I are trapped between pain and hell.

I called all of her relatives and my two-sibling living in the USA.

My brother was in the US Navy. He put me in charge of funeral preparation. I did my duties like a good and loving daughter without emotion. Every day I checked myself for any symbol of the death of the most valuable human in my life. Grief refused to release the pain to me. Was suffering being kind? Or was I losing my humanity?

Her former Apostolic Church provided the services on May 7, 2011, the Eve of Mother’s Day and thirty-seven days after her death.

My conscience taunts, ‘if she were an Adventist, her funeral would be on Mother’s Day.’ Death was sending me a signal I couldn’t comprehend.

Still, I was denied the opportunity to feel!

My sister in the USA couldn’t attend her funeral. Searching the faces of families and friends in the congregation, her youngest child, my little sister, is the only one in the church I saw that shed a tear. Among the families and friends that attended her funeral, besides her casket and the words of the Minister officiating the sermon, no one showed any emotion that represented death to me. Yet, joy was absent too.

What is the symbol of death?

‘A skull,’ says Google.

My life went on as if I didn’t lose a mother. I tortured myself, “is it time to grieve now?”

While waiting on a response, I got a call about 10:00 PM on June 7, 2011. One of my sisters in the USA informed me that my father was dead!

Mr. Gersham Lewis NOVEMBER 4, 1922 — JUNE 7, 2011

https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/north-miami-fl/gersham-lewis-4706607

Again, life forces me back. He was a better parent. He was kinder, more thoughtful, and showed us love. He took the time to counsel us. Whatever problems life throws at us, we could talk to him. He listens and never say a negative thing. He always remembers my birthdays and often send birthday cards to me. The happy memories he left behind, gave me the will to move on. My mother was the opposite. Something touched my heart after hanging up and sadness overwhelmed me. I felt something. For him, I could do as death ordered. The pain was lighter, because I forgave him, and we became closer in the last eight years before he died. He visited Jamaica three years earlier and stayed with me and my family. My children got to know him.

I was unable to attend my father’s funeral because of circumstances I couldn’t control, but I wrote a beautiful letter read by one of my half-brothers.

Life answered my question.

In the presence of love, I was able to grieve for my father.

Life seems to always have the last say.

I was able to attend the funeral for the one whom I couldn’t grieve. But the opposite for the one whom I could. I asked myself, was death extracting revenge because I disobyed one of it’s order?

I lost my mother on the eve of my twin son’s birthday March 30, 2011. She was buried on the eve of Mother’s Day, May 7, 2011. My father died on June 7, 2011. He was laid to rest on the eve of Father’s Day, June 18, 2011.

What did all of this mean? What was death telling me? These dates represent some of the most memorable occasions in my life.

An eve is the day — or night — just before some event.

https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/eve

Did life protect me? Or did death save me?

What do you think?

All of the above are true. Any other information needed will be made available.

Thank you for reading this piece. I hope you are inspired.

Submittion date. 08/24/2021.