MAY DEATH COME IN THE RIGHT ORDER
I’m addicted to obituaries. I scan them quickly to see if all is right with the world, meaning that those who died had their fair share of years on this earth.
I read the first names, which are often dead giveaways—Rowena, Roland, Eunice, Elton, Gertrude and Godfrey have most likely lived a good long life.
I feel so happy—relieved? comforted?—when I read lines like this one, about a man named Willard. Born in 1912, Willard met “the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen” while playing league baseball. I wonder if she was in the stands watching his every move, thinking he was the most handsome man she had ever seen.
Was it love at first sight for both of them? Nearly every summer they traveled to Missouri “to visit family, swim, float or shoot fireworks over the Current River.” Really, can life get much better than that?
One day every person on the obituary page was at least 83 years old. I read their life-and-death stories with a smile on my face, feeling a sense of peace knowing that the dead had a good shot at life.
Those late-life obituaries make me feel good. Death is not a happy thing but it comes to us all and, like the blessing bestowed on the farmer and his family, we can only hope it comes to us in the right order. Here is the story:
A wise wanderer spent the night with a farmer and his children. The farmer asked for a blessing before the wanderer prepared for her travels. “Grandparent die, children die, grandchildren die.” Horrified, the farmer said, “What kind of a blessing is that?” The wanderer replied, “Death comes to us all, but my hope is that it comes for you in the right order.”
All too often the right order is disturbed. Reading the obituaries of those who die too young, I start sniffing around the edges of the words, obituary hound that I am, searching for clues about the cause of death. I always wonder, given the focus of my writing and work with youth, if alcohol and/or other drugs were involved.
Rarely are drugs ever mentioned, so it takes some sleuthing, but if a 40-year-old dies with no mention of the cause of death I get suspicious and try to hunt out the facts by reading between the lines.
Sometimes, more often lately as people understand and embrace the fact that addiction is a disease, the answer is tucked away inside the life story. Cody, 26, lived his short life with “passion, desire, and enthusiasm,” but he also had “a dark side that battled with drugs.” He lost his battle with “the demons.”
Jason died at age 22. His parents shared a poem he wrote shortly before he died, hoping it would help other parents understand how addicted people “feel inside.” Here are a few lines:
“I hate you heroin for all the things that you’ve done
When I first met you, I thought you were the one
But now that I know you, you are the devil
I never thought you could bring me to this level.”