I just found it beautiful
It was mentioned that I write about the lives death touches, but I’ve been fortunate enough to experience the deaths of only three relatives, one of which was actually close. Death has hardly changed my life, so I’m forced to study the lives of others. For example.
When I worked at the funeral home, I delivered death certificates to a woman who recently lost her husband. They were an older couple, perhaps in their seventies, married a long time. As I approached the house, she emerged from the door inside the opened garage with curlers in her hair and an expression of uncertainty on her face. We chatted a little. She told me she hadn’t expected him to succumb to his illness so soon, that she enjoyed the memorial video we made for her, and that she might need some more certified death certificates. It was congenial and light. As I always do, I told her, “If you need anything, please let us know.” Her response stopped me short.
“I need him back.” I held her needful gaze for a moment too long before telling her, “I wish I could.” She began blinking back tears at the idea that I was not a life-giver, just a death certificate-giver, and that her husband wouldn’t be coming back no matter how much she needed him. I went on to advise her to lean on her support system and followed that up with the assumption that she was doing the best she could, that it was all she could do. And while I felt like a hypocrite because I wasn’t trained in grief-counseling or was even remotely aware of the colossal grief that results from a spouse death, she nodded like she was listening to me. Like she trusted what I said.
It was unprofessional, I suppose, but my eyes grew wet and I had to contain my empathy for her. I felt stupid for spouting all the advice I’d heard in the business, and even worse that she was trusting it all. She needed someone well-versed in grief care, but she got a twenty-four-year-old who was blasting Rammstein on the way in. I felt like a fraud. But I realized she needed someone to say those things, and it could’ve been OJ Simpson saying them to her, so long as she heard it loud and clear.
These interactions, these raw emotions I tend to experience and witness, they all inspire me to write. It’s hard to make such things up because they’re too beautiful for the imagination. The stillness in our conversation, her quiet loneliness, my longing to be the supportive professional she needed—all of it was a monumental moment that lasted thirty seconds in reality, but will hold on for a lifetime. I told her I would keep her in my thoughts, and it was no lie.
She inspired me to put down on paper what I found to be beautiful. And while it was painful for her and painfully awkward for me, it was something worth remembering.