Death

I was never experienced with death... who is?. My father died when I was just 13 months old. Since then I was never really exposed to such immediate loses. That is until my brother died a couple of years ago. Surprisingly it didn't phase me as much as I expected. My brother was also like a father to me. He was the man of the house when my father died and he helped out a lot. So when he died, I in fact lost more then just a brother. I lost a father too.... again. To put some salt into the wounds, my mother passed away not long after. Her death has affected me in a similar way. Though what I've found is it's doubled in effect.Now, I was never scared of death. I still say I'm not. But I think each day I come to the realisation that we're all going to die somehow, somewhere, some time. Though, each day I think about it more and more. I'm less scared of it then I ever was. What scares me the most is will I get to do everything I want to do before I die? I’m not talking about those crappy lists of the best ultimate things you’d do before you die. I’m talking about real life things, not Hollywood dribble.

The harder part about all this is that my little nephew and niece whom I look after like my own are also experiencing some hardship with dealing with the loss of their father and their grand mother. I have been discussing things about death with them lately as I recently saw some behaviour I figured could only be related to such an event. And I was right, luckily.

While the family went through this experience, they sugar coated my nephew's version and when I went to say something I was stopped. I was told it wasn't my place. This is fair enough, so I didn't say anything at all. Until one day I found a piece of paper that my nephew had drawn some pictures on. He's really good at drawing and I was a little shocked at what an 8 year old boy could imagine. Though not surprised, the drawing depicted him flying into heaven as an angel, with the words "I wish I was dead so I could see daddy" between himself and what he perceived at his father.

While the message was disturbing, it wasn't surprising thanks to what I let happen. It's something I regretted for a couple of months until I finally figured out the best way to approach him about what he had drawn. I didn't want to bring on a tone that stopped him from drawing, or worse, continue to do so but hide it. There's nothing like losing the trust of someone, let alone a child's. So I had to approach this with some fine touches that would allow him to continue expressing himself in the same way, without worrying about hiding things from anyone and most of all him family.

When I was hanging out with him once, I had the picture with me in my pocket and I produced it to show him what I found, explaining that it was a really cool drawing and that I wanted to know what it was about.

He explained to me, at first with the look of "Oh crap, I'm busted" but in the end we had a good chat about how much he misses his dad and how much I miss my brother. If anything, it was a comforting talk for both of us to know that we're both feeling the same things.

While that one chat helped, there are plenty more conversations I plan on having with him about the subject over a long period of time that will hopefully help him understand what really happened. All the while I'll be dealing with my own issues on the loss of my family.

Getting back to death itself. One of my mates told me once "Death is a comfortable thought when you're ready to die" Does that mean I'm ready?