Fear of Death

Fear of death is something that has been torturing me since a very young age. It has been paralysing at times. Avoidance and inaction feels like freezing time after all. Not doing, inertia, gives you the false impression that you managed to pause life itself. 
But you didn't. 

Sometimes you may even consider inertia as 'not living.' And if you're not living, how could you ever die?
The safety not acting brings is very comforting. You make no right, you make no wrong, and you also don't progress. Because progressing means death. Doing brings you a step closer to death. 

I have been avoiding dealing with death for a very long time. The first time I had to face death was when family pets died. The first couple of times I was too young to understand what death meant. Then, I realised death is loss. Death is not ever seeing someone or something again, never experiencing life with them again, never experiencing what you love about them again.

When I was ten, my mum's mother, my grandma, passed away. She was 96 and bed bound for the last eight years of her life. She died in her sleep, on an armchair in the living room, as I was playing with my toys in the same room. They told me she died in her own bedroom a few minutes later. I recently was told by a cousin that she actually died in front of me. I still cannot digest that. I have no recollection of it. At the time, I didn't really deal with her death. I wasn't even allowed at her funeral. It wasn't until years later that I actually managed to come to terms with her passing.

The following years I heard about a few of my parents' relatives and acquaintances passing away. Most of the time I didn't even know them in person, so even though I might have felt a bit shaken, I was able to move on without paying attention. The very few times someone I actually knew passed away I didn't really think about it. I was sad and even devastated when I heard about it, but the next day it was as if the bad news had disappeared from my thoughts. Even when I went to someone's funeral, I tried to treat it like a bad dream. It wasn't real to me. It wasn't that I didn't care about those people, it was that I didn't have the mental capacity to deal with loss. I didn't know how to mourn and move on. 

One day before I turned 21, our dog, Lulu, had to be put down. She had multiple types of cancer and she was suffering. She was 15 years old. I had to tell her goodbye, so I spent some time with her, telling her how much I loved her, how much she meant to me. We had her since I was six. I couldn't stop crying. After the vet put her down I didn't stop crying for a week. I couldn't eat, I couldn't speak. I was a mess. Up to this day I feel like she's going to come to the kitchen sometimes and give us her googly eyes to get food. 

I took an oath to never have a dog or any other pet after that. I didn't have the strength to live with their loss. 

In the past five years I keep on hearing about death. In my personal circles and in the world. Terrorism, mass murders, suicides, old age, diseases etc. And I block it. I desperately attempt to never think about it. Many times I fail though. And those times it's tremendously hard to get on with life. 

After the loss of a close family friend a few months ago, then my grandma’s and more recently a family member’s miscarriage I have been thinking about death constantly.

We recently visited our family friend's widow. She was a shadow of her once cheerful self. There was a sadness in her eyes, a surrender. She's 56 years old, relatively young. Still, you could tell she didn't know how to keep on living. She had been married to her husband since she was 17 years old. She only knew how to live as his wife. She had never experienced adult life without him. Luckily, she became grandmother a few months prior to her husband's passing. From our conversation I realised her grandchild is what is keeping her alive. The night after our visit I found it hard to sleep. I couldn't shake her image from my head. The way she sat, how many times she almost burst into tears...

On the 23rd of July my dad's mother, my other grandma, passed away at 102. She died in her sleep on her bed, surrounded by her children and children in law. I hadn't seen her much in the past ten years, only a couple of times a year -if so-, since I lived in England. The last 2 years she couldn't communicate and didn't know what was going on most of the time. The only time I cried was when during her funeral, one of the children she saved as a nurse spoke about her life. I still haven't mourned her loss. Maybe because I didn't spend as much time with her. The funeral was quite hard, especially since my aunt decided she wanted an open casket. She looked quite peaceful, as if she was asleep. However, when I touched her forehead to say goodbye, she was frozen. Then it hit me: That was her dead body. It was an empty vessel and my grandma wasn't in there anymore.

I haven't been able to sleep properly since her passing. My nightmares have gotten worse and my anxiety has hit the roof. I think with her death and what came after her death, I had to admit that life ends. I had to face that life is short and when the end comes, it's the end. 

Please don't respond with your religious beliefs about the afterlife; they're irrelevant to me. And unnecessary at this point. I personally believe death brings the end. You're gone. Nothingness.
And that will be forever hard to handle.

Two days ago I was informed that a relative of mine -who has been trying to get pregnant since April- had a miscarriage. It was very early stages of the pregnancy, but she was still broken. I didn't speak with her much as we're trying to give the couple privacy. Nevertheless, I could feel her pain for the loss of a future child. The loss of her hopes that she would be a mother. Her and her husband are mourning at the moment. 

It has been a very tough summer. The warmth of the weather collides with the deaths in my immediate circles, only highlighting the antithesis.
Quite mentally drained at the moment, I'm hopelessly searching for a healthy strategy on coming to terms with loss, with death.
I have a very long way to go, and I'm unsure I'll ever manage it. 

~

ps. In reading this, I hope you find comfort in the fact that you are not alone. We all come across death and loss in life. It's one of the few things that we all have in common, a few things that can unite us.
ps2. Part of a poem inspired by the events of this summer.

My grandma passed away

I just received a phone call that my grandma passed away.
She was 101 years old, but that doesn't make it any easier.
She was a truly spectacular woman.

A bit of her story:
When she was a child she wasn't allowed to go to school because it was unthinkable to send your daughter to school back then, unless you were rich.
She learned how to write and read by herself, and she sometimes stood outside her brother's classroom just to hear what the teachers had to say. The teachers suggested to her father that she should take her brother's place in the classroom.
When she was a teenager they sent her in Asia Minor to work for a rich family as a maid. There, she had access to a huge library and studied continuously.
Later on she was part of the resistance (EPON) and gave people flyers to inform them of the current situation and anti regime moves they could partake in (something that was punishable by death at the time).
Then, she became a volunteer nurse and treated those who were fighting for Greece's freedom. There she met my grandad who was in the resistance as well and had been tortured by Germans. They got married and had two children.
She was very strongly urging both my dad and his sister to go to school and learn. She considered education to be paramount. So she worked two jobs to make sure they could finish school (as my grandad was a person with physical disabilities and a fisherman, so he didn't make much). She saved numerous children as a nurse, since she didn't ask for money to do their shots.
When her daughter had children my grandma raised them because she was married to someone who worked in the army and they had to move a lot.
She lived to see some of her grandchildren's children as well.
In her lifetime, she and my grandad made sure that they bought a house, so her children would be able to have a place to call home.
Up to when she was 80+ years old she would still take the bus to the city.
Unfortunately, later she became bed bound, and in the past few years she didn't remember much. But she was always surrounded by love from three generations.

This description doesn't even do her and her story justice, but I'm a tad too emotional to think and write properly.

Γιαγιά, καλό ταξίδι <3

Neighbour passed away

Today I was notified that one of my neighbours in Greece passed away.

I knew this lady since I was a child, and I very vividly remember her and her husband (who passed away six months ago). Her husband died of heart disease (he had a pacemaker for years). She died of a heart attack or something similar. She also suffered from Alzheimer's among others.

When they were younger, they were very energetic people.
Her husband was the president of the local committee for years, and he organised so many lovely events for the whole neighbourhood to enjoy for free. He had a kind smile and was always greeting neighbours and helping out those in need.
She, even as an elder lady, was beautiful and dynamic. She had piercing green eyes, black hair and a raspy voice. She smoked like a chimney and drank a lot. She was kind and helpful as well, and I remember once, when my mum fainted in our house -I was four and didn't know what to do- she came to the rescue.
I will be forever be grateful for that.

In her late years she was in a lot of pain, and after her husband died her conditioned worsened.
They were one of the very few couples of that generation to not have children, and that had been a talk in the neighbourhood. Whether they chose to not have children, or they didn't have a choice, it's no one's business.
But that meant that each other was all they had, especially since all their relatives but their nephews had passed away. And their nephews didn't really care much to visit or support them. You see, they knew they didn't leave them any money, so they didn't care.

My mum found out on her way to the bakery shop. There were papers with details of the funeral on every sign post in the neighbourhood.
She was very shaken and when she announced the news to me she was evidently trying hard not to cry. I don't often see my mum like that, so I realised how much she respected and appreciated our neighbour who passed away.
I use "passed away" and not "died" as my mum didn't use the word "died" either today. I guess it sounds softer that way.

It feels as if with every elder person passing away, a part of my neighbourhood dies as well. Those elder people made this neighbourhood what it is -to me. They gave it that oldschool character, they kept it tight, as a neighbourhood.

She was over 70 but under 80 years old. Not young, but not ridiculously old either. And that scares me, as other important people of my life grow older as well.
Death is a scary thing after all, and sometimes only justified when it ends one's suffering. Like our neighbour's.

I don't really know how to feel, or what else to say. So I'd like to remain silent. For a minute or two. And reflect on life, try not to think of death, and honour her memory.

And if any of you who read this are religious, please say a prayer for her soul to rest in peace. She was religious too, so I'm sure she'd appreciate it.

Her name was Eleni.