I fear death, not mine, but the death of people that I love. I should be accustomed to death by now. I have watched so many who were so important in my life leave this world. My beautiful Uncle Bob was the first person whose death I endured. He was only in his twenties but he had a lethal form of cancer that had already taken one of his legs. When five year old me invaded his privacy I saw him attaching a prosthesis and I was frightened. He somehow managed to explain what was happening to him without scaring me and I have loved him to this very day for his gentle candor. When I was only not yet six years old he breathed his final bit of life. The adults who were grieving him did not seem to realize that I was fully aware of what had happened because Uncle Bob had gently told me what to expect. I have always remembered his dignity and the ways that he fully enjoyed his life to the very end. He has forever remained one of my all time favorite people. 

My father and Uncle Bob were best friends. They had gone to high school together and attended Texas A&M College at the same time. After my mother and father got married they played matchmaker by introducing Uncle Bob to my mother’s sister. Their intrigue worked and Uncle Bob officially became my uncle when he married my Aunt Claudia. They were a beautiful couple and I adored their visits when our home filled with laughter. It never occurred to me that someone so vital would actually die, even as Uncle Bob so honestly told me about his battle with cancer and the fate that might end his life sooner that he had hoped. He was resigned to his fate but determined to get as much out of the time that was left as possible. He was working on earning a Phd., expecting his first child with my aunt, climbing mountains, and spreading love wherever he went. When he died I knew that he was ready because he had told me so. Somehow as a little girl I believed that the death of someone so young was simply a quirk that I would never witness again, but I was wrong. 

I was traumatized when my father died so suddenly and so unexpectedly when I was eight years old. I had no time to ponder the possibility of his leaving. It was almost impossible for me to accept that my eighty year old grandparents were still hale and hearty, but my energetic father who was just reaching his stride at the age of thirty three was gone. I quietly went inside of myself until I was in my early twenties. I felt uncertain all the time and worried about who would be next to fall. Somehow I pushed myself to engage with life the way I had seen my Uncle Bob do, overcoming my reticence to become emotionally involved with others lest I lose them. 

Life has been good to me and now I find myself living in my seventy fifth year still adoring my father and my uncle for the ways that they taught me to grab life and embrace people and adventures. I sometimes believe that I have loved each individual that I have encountered just a bit more deeply than I might otherwise have done because I so viscerally understood how fragile each life is. We do not know from one moment to the next who might be the next to die, so we should not waste a single moment with them. 

I have lost beloved people one by one. My grandmother, Minnie Bell, would be an old woman of eighty eight years at the time of her death, but it was still difficult for fifteen year old me to watch her die so bravely and so concerned about how we would all be without her. My cousin, Sandra, Uncle Bob’s only child, would die at the age of sixteen when I was only twenty one. My sometimes gruff but always just a teddy bear, Uncle Andy, had a heart attack that killed him instantly when he was only forty. My Grandma Ulrich followed him in death soon after. Then there was a long pause in death’s grip on people in my live that allowed me to set aside my anxieties about losing family members and friends. Life was fun and easy and I grabbed every bit of it that I was able to do.

I was not quite in my late thirties when my Grandpa Little died. He was one hundred eight years old and had become my hero in every sense of the word. He was wise and kind and very tired of grieving for lost loved ones. He had lost all three of his children by then and many of his grandchildren as well. All of his peers were gone and he had was ready to move on to whatever the next stop might be. He was unafraid to die but weary of watching those around him leave him behind.  

I was in my forties when my sweet Uncle William died. Somehow his death seemed to be part of the natural order of things because he was an older man. Then came my Uncle Paul who had also managed to live a good long time. My sweet mother-n-law, Mary, who was born with a heart defect beat the odds and lived to the age of seventy six even though she had been told from an early age that she would not make it past her twenties. 

It was when my peers, friends the same age as I was, began to die that I felt those same pangs of distress that had seized my heart when I was a little girl. My dear friend and confidante, Pat, died far to soon. The two of us had so many more adventures and milestones to share. She was my chosen sister who I thought would walk by my side until we were old ladies but that was not to be. Our incredible friend, Egon, had a fatal heart attack one day and I struggled to understand why he too would not grow old with us. Then came the death of his wife, Marita, and the passing of Pat’s husband, Bill. Suddenly friendships that Mike and I had so enjoyed were gone while the two of us still had years to journey without them in this life. 

My mother made it to the age of eighty four. She had lung cancer that might have ended with horrible pain, but she was saved from that kind of horror by a quick transition from this life that was beautiful and so perfect given all of the sacrifices and love that she had so freely given to every soul that she ever met. Nonetheless, I have missed her more and more with each passing year and have grown to better understand how incredible she was.  

I’ve been to funerals for my peers and for my cousins. My Aunt Claudia and her twin sister died within weeks of each other. My longest living Aunt Valeria died during the Covid pandemic when she was just shy of being one hundred years old. Now I am seventy five years and becoming all too aware that I will witness more deaths at a must more continuous pace. Therein lie my fears. It is so hard to lose someone even when we believe that they have transitioned to a beautiful afterlife. The pain and grief of death lingers and I dread those feelings and the changes that they will engender.

I am at a stage in life in which each day moves me more closely to my own final moments. Somehow that does not scare me as much as enduring the deaths of people I love. My life has been wonderful because of the people with whom I have shared it. I fear losing more of them as the years go by. That may be one of the most difficult challenges that lies ahead. I hope that I will face each day with the same beautiful spirit that I witnessed in my Uncle Bob did so long ago. He taught five year old me how to savor each moment and live with joy regardless of inevitable challenges. His lesson has served me well.