by Michelle Graf

Created on: August 04, 2010

Sometime in the 1980's, around the time I graduated high school, there was a popular song on the radio that consisted of a voiceover set to music.  The voiceover script was from a commencement speech, and was filled with practical advice and admonishments on how to live life.  The one line that comes to mind frequently is that about being nice to your siblings - they are a link to your past and the most likely to stick by you in the future. 

Twenty years ago, and a few weeks, my brother was killed in a work site accident.  As I passed my fortieth birthday, this aspect of the song has reinforced the sense of loss at his death.  Time does not cure grief, but life has a tendency to go on and put distance between the sharpness of the immediate agony and bewilderment.  As time passes, and I age, however, this loss takes on a deeper meaning.  As my parents age, and, in the case of my father, pass away, that shared experience of the past and support through current and future trials is lacking.  It makes those most difficult life transitions that much harder to bear.

As I watch my mother watch her siblings age, sicken, and I see the realization that the time will soon come where she, too, will lose them, it puts me in a strange spot.  This is one life passage that I regrettably dealt with before she did, and yet there is no wisdom gained from it to pass on.  While we can pass on tips and advice on planning a wedding or growing a marriage, bearing children and raising a family, there isn't much to be gleaned from the experience of death at a young age. 

I had a conversation not too long ago with a well-meaning but unknowing friend who tried to put a positive spin on such an experience.  The usual truisms and condolences that come with death are ridiculous when speaking of the loss of a young, vital person.  There was no suffering of disease to end, no long lost loved ones to join in the afterlife, no lessons learned or reasons to be thankful.  I may have faith myself, but I am not sure that given the choice between meeting God and getting to know his lovely baby daughter, my brother, or any of us, would choose knowing God over knowing their first born child. 

I remember, through the haze of shock and pain, that I stumbled through the societal aspects of grieving - the funeral, the gathering of family and friends - as though I had wandered into the wrong lecture hall in college.  

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