[Trigger warning: sad things]

We’re going to have to talk about death.

                I’d much rather talk about any number of things. I’ve got a lot to say about the existence of a notwithstaning clause in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. I badly want to spread the word about Tilting Biped’s brilliant production of Macbeth. I spent two weeks in England recently and have plenty to say about Brexit, climate change, road signs and Comic Conventions. I still have to compose my retrospective for Stephen Moffat’s tenure with Doctor Who. . .

                But circumstances bring me to death.

                It’s an appropriate day for it. The air outside is grey, and damp with spittles of rain. It’s colder than it’s been for a while, not the razor cold of January but the sad and sleepy cold of the dying summer. All I can see outside is concrete – there are plenty of trees and grass about it, but it all seems more like cheap green furniture than anything living or vibrant. All I can hear are the cars. . .

                I’ve written on death before – pseudo philosophical musings and laments for passing famous people who’s art once moved me and whose halted output made me grouchy. But Real People? Whom I actually knew? I’ve not actually been touched by death in a long, long time. How naïve I’ve been about it. . .

                To be sure, I’ve not lost an immediate family member, but someone very close to me has. The loss is very real.

                It is astonishing how quickly life can change, how one’s assumptions can fall apart, one’s rituals disrupted. I woke up that morning thinking the world would be no different when I went to bed. I was sitting in a choir rehearsal, serenely mumbling the (mostly wrong) notes of Braham’s Requiem, looking forward to a Barbecue in the evening, and perhaps a little live music the next day. It was a beautiful Saturday. There was no reason to think it would be anything but a relaxing weekend.

               

                At one point, our guest conductor felt the need to share his personal connection to Requiem. He’d lost people recently, including his brother-in-law. “It was expected,” he reassured us. “But there’s never a good time, is there?”  

                Not two minutes later, I received a text. There had been an accident, and someone was being transported to St. Michael’s hospital in Toronto. I had held out hope that perhaps it could be something manageable, even trivial – a sprained ankle say. Pretending not to know that no one gets transported to St. Michaels hospital for a sprained ankle. . . By the time I got to the rendezvous point, not half an hour later, I had gotten the message that someone had died.

                I am not accustomed to death. I do not understand it now any better than I did when I was five. I did not grasp the message at first. Honest to god, idiotic as it was, I seriously thought it meant “in a coma”. Or possibly “dying” -present progressive tense, as in ongoing, possibly reversible. Grammar teacher though I am, it was a full minute before I really understood the tense of the verb.  

                Somebody had died.

                There followed a long, long drive to be with the family. Of course there was no radio, and almost no conversation - what could be said? What had happened was unspeakable, and we were driving to confront the intolerable. It was unbearably claustrophobic. And the day did not get better from there.

                I confess, I did not know the man well; but liked him quite well, and keenly feel the king-sized gap he’s left behind. Unlike my (guest) conductor’s recent loss, this one was not expected, and I marvel at the sheer colossal pointlessness of this abrupt removal of someone who meant so much to so many. . .I chafe as well at the helplessness of seeing people I love in pain, and being able to do nothing.

               

                I can’t even say “this will pass”, because it won’t. Things will never be the same again.

                There’s only one lesson, or cold - comfort I can take from it all: we too shall pass. Any time, any where. So we may as well stand tall when our time comes and enjoy what time we have.  I have a feeling the departed would approve. . .