on dying

I've been reading The History of Love and there are some sentences in that book that really just get me. Absolutely get me, like hands around the heart and squeezing hard get me. Most of the book has to do with death in one form or another. Losing people, losing things, losing life.

Here is a quote:

'Three years later, I lost Mameh. The last time I saw her she was wearing a yellow apron. She was stuffing things in a suitcase, the house was a wreck. She told me to go out into the woods. She'd packed me food, and told me to wear my coat, even though it was July. 'Go,' she said. I was too old to listen, but like a child I listened. She told me that she'd follow the next day. We chose a spot we both knew in the woods. The giant walnut tree you used to like, Tateh, because you said it had human qualities. I didn't bother to say goodbye. I chose to believe what was easier. I waited. But. She never came. Since then I've lived with the guilt of understanding too late that she thought she would have been a burden to me. I lost Fritzy. He was studying in Vilna, Tateh - someone who knew someone told me he'd last been seen on a train. I lost Sari and Hanna to the dogs. I lost Herschel to the rain. I lost Josef to a crack in time. I lost the sound of laughter. I lost a pair of shoes, I'd taken them off to sleep, the shoes Herschel gave me, and when I woke they were gone, I walked barefoot for days and then I broke down and stole someone else's. I lost the only woman I ever wanted to love. I lost years. I lost books. I lost the house where I was born. And I lost Isaac. So who is to say that somewhere along the way, without my knowing it, I didn't also lose my mind.'

I'm not sure of the moment exactly during the last three weeks that I became quite so preoccupied with death. I remember thinking during the accident that I might be killing my companion. Filled me with absolute horror, and I was too busy being horrified to consider the possibility of my own death. I seem to have been considering it ever since.

It's a strange thing isn't it? You want to be the one who goes so you are not the one who is left. Being left behind is much worse than just being oblivious (I believe there is no afterlife), but perhaps wanting to be the one who goes first is the ultimate form of running away?

When I was little I lived with my paternal grandmother in the week and my mom and dad on the weekends. I would have to say my bedtime prayers every night (on my knees if you please) and mine would be a mantra of 'Dear God, please don't let Gran die' over and over under my breath until I could get off my knees and get into bed. The gods must have listened because Gran lived into her 90s.

Eventually, when she died, I was distanced enough not to be really affected. She'd had Alzheimer's so she wasn't really herself anymore anyway. I often wonder though how that feeling of extreme attachment ebbs to a point where you feel vague discontent at the idea of someone's death, but not the gnashing misery that you felt in your gut when you considered it before. How easily things slip away.

My maternal grandmother's death affected me much more badly. She was younger. I was closer to her and I was too preoccupied with my life at the time to visit her much when she was in hospital. I didn't understand that she was dying because no-one told me, so when she did go, and I was told on a sunny day that she had died I was aghast.

My grandfather died some time later and even though I loved him, my Oupa, I didn't really feel a huge pull of anything when he died. I had visited him a lot after Ouma died and I think he was just really relieved to go. I barely remember either funeral, although I must have been there. Instead, I have vivid memories of my Great Uncle Vic's funeral, but that's a story for another day.

Yesterday at the divorce mediator's office we were asked if we had any funeral insurance and when we answered 'no', the mediator said 'wow, living dangerously, aren't you?'

Living dangerously by not having funeral insurance? Doesn't that seem a little ironic?

What do you think? Do you have any funeral insurance? Do you think you need any? What's your approach to the adventure of dying?