This winter, my very close friend lost her mom. She and her siblings were very close to their mother and so the loss of her mother was significant. I knew the feeling of losing a parent. Going through the death of a parent is a difficult process, but I also knew that it wasn’t over.
Each body has its own way of shutting down due to illness or injury. In a natural death, your breathing will simply slow until it stops. That is out of our control. Eventually all of our bodies will wear down to nothing more than ashes and dust. But American culture struggles with accepting mortality. We don’t like to age; we don’t like ugly. Unfortunately, neither idealizing nor ignoring death will make it go away.
“Closure doesn’t even exist. It’s a made-up concept that we use to talk about loss and grief, but seeking it can do more harm than good.”
The When You Die staff is committed to bringing death back into our everyday conversations as an integral part of our human journey.
Kate Braestrup shares the story of Nina, a five-year-old who insisted to her parents that she needed to visit her dead cousin and best friend Andy, a four-year-old, at a nearby funeral parlor.
