What it looks like in the end

I've been thinking a lot about death and dying recently. Ironically, it has nothing to do with the fact that Scott is currently directing a play about it. In fact, Scott and I have not talked a whole lot about the play, really. I know very little about the whole process this time. At times that's been weird, other times, I'm relieved. I have other things to focus on...real life is playing out what he's creating in a fictional world on stage. Without any cuts, rewrites, or additional angles.

Maybe it's because my grandmother died a couple of months ago. More likely it's because someone I love dearly is struggling with the weight of a parent with devastating cancer. I am helpless in the face of it, unable to find the right words to say, the right ways to help, anything to make it better. I find myself brushing off other problems, and other people's problems, as petty and little, which is a shame, because other problems are problems, too. I've always been that way, too black and white. Too little sympathy for the little things with deference to the big things. But then, when the big things happen, I find myself frozen, emotionally incapable of a proper response. Is it because I failed to build up my responses gradually, with the little things? I don't know.

Anyway, falling in line with God's thematic presentation in my life, I stumbled across this today, on my favorite blog (http://www.dooce.com/). Usually, the blog is lighthearted and funny, making me laugh til I cry. But today, she featured a link to this website (read the description below before you link):
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/gallery/2008/mar/31/lifebeforedeath?picture=333325401

It's a series of pictures of people before and after they died from cancer. It's haunting, abrupt, difficult, and beautiful. Don't link if you're easily upset, or if this situation is too close to home for you. But if you do link, make sure you read the text under each photo.

It is difficult to see what a person looks like after their soul has left their body, I remember looking at my grandmother in her casket and being relieved that she looked nothing like the woman I knew all those years. The essence of who she was had left, all that was left was the house it stayed in. That is what is in these photographs, you see the before with their soul, with the light in their eyes, and the after, when it is gone. There is a comment on Dooce's blog that ricocheted around my head for long afterwards. Anonymous said, "i kept hoping they wouldn't die in the next photo". That same futility surrounds our feelings about death and dying, the loss of control haunts us.

This series of pictures made me want to live my life to the fullest each day, buy the "new fridge-freezer" right now, be content in this particular moment. It's all we have right now, this moment. I hope you're spending it in a beautiful way.