Do you remember the first time that you experienced death? Not like dying, but experiencing more or less the act of losing someone close to you.
I remember the first time, it was Grandma and she was 92 years young. Way to young to leave this world, I am sure you would agree.
She helped raise me and was always there to babysit me when my mom worked two jobs to support me and my sister. My earliest recollection of her was the times in which she would scream as a child. She would always say “shut and clean your tuquist”. For those of you don’t know, the tuquist is yiddish for “ASS”. On top of all the Yiddish slang that she taught me, the women could also cook a mean matza ball.
Unlike most of people in my childhood, she along with my mom were the stabilizing forces, whenever I needed either for anything they were there.
My grandma was a strong women, she had lost her husband at a young age and her father at a young age, as such she was a very hardened women. She had experienced a lot of death, maybe that is why she treasured the moments that we would all eat dinner together as a family.
I remember preparing myself trying to prepare mentally for her passing, I was 21 years old and still in college. I knew she was old and she had beaten cancer twice and her number was going to be up soon but as much as I tried to prepare for it to happen, I still remember her death hitting me like a sack of bricks.
Even though, I still had my mom I felt really lonely back then. The point is you can never prepare for death and each death that you experience doesn’t at all prepare you future death’s from future loved ones.
I also remember after her passing, being so utterly depressed about her passing, that I ended up getting pulled over by a cop while leaving the local KFC. The copy was so sure for some reason that I was under the influence of something that he insisted on bringing me back to the jail. Somehow I ended up spending a couple hours in jail, that day even though all charges ended up being dropped. The cop also ended up confiscating my KFC.
Three days after her death, I even tried performing stand up comedy. Let’s just say my comedy set didn’t go as planned, it was the first time I had food delivered to me on stage as in thrown at me. I remember forgetting all my jokes and then for some reason some guy in the front row started tossing nachos at me.
The point is as much as you think you can prepare for the death of a loved one, in reality you can’t. It just penetrates your senses and puts your mind, body, and feeling out of a whack.
The inspiration for this post has been over the last 2 years, I have experienced tragedy in both Hurricane Sandy and recently I lost another individual whom I considered a mentor. Looking back on the amazing lives of both of these individuals, I just hope that someday I can have as positive effect on other people lives as they did on mine.
