These past few weeks, I have been in frequent contact with people facing the final days, the last hours, or the immediate aftermath of losing a loved one.
Yes, in part, it’s a reflection of my age. People my age lose loved ones. If we are lucky enough to still have our parents (and most people my age don’t), then we are starting to lose friends, siblings, spouses, even children.
I haven’t had any close-in losses in these past weeks—and for that, I am grateful. But I know many who have. And many who are bracing for an imminent loss.
The father of a friend of my daughter’s is at the end of his life.
A friend’s dad died a few days ago.
Another friend’s dad, a month ago.
Others have lost parents in the past few months.
A former colleague’s husband died suddenly before Christmas.
A sibling’s colleague lost their barely-adult child to suicide.
And in my hospice work, I see or hear about so many others who are in their final weeks, days, hours.
Every single one finally doing the one thing they must do. The one thing every single one of us must do.
Which is to die.
As simple—and as hard—as that.
It’s a lot to witness, even when the losses are not mine to bear. Even when I don’t know the person who is dying. The stories, the messages, the language—they bring back so much. I find myself deeply moved—not in a tragic way, but in a tender, weighty, aching way. It’s relentless, this cycle of life-death-life-death-life.
Even though I know what it’s like, I forget what it’s like.
I re-remember what it is to take a loved one to hospice. To visit someone one last time at home or in hospital.
I re-remember the numbness, the way the news stuns the body. The precise timestamp of death—how it punches the gut, how it turns a person’s entire existence into a line between two dates.
I re-remember what it is to break the news, to arrange a funeral, to write an obituary, to select music, to order food and drinks—while somehow still remembering to feed the kids and the pets.
I re-remember what it is to pick up a piece of death admin, then another, and another—writing not just birth dates but death dates. Updating my own civil status. Correcting the number of children I have. Sending proof of death to LinkedIn and Facebook so that profiles can be “memorialised.” Such a shocking term.
I remember all of it, even though I have also forgotten.
The heartbreak—both acute and chronic.
The shock, even when it wasn’t.
The incomprehension, the mind caught between knowing and not knowing in the same second.
The isolation, the sense of separation, even when surrounded by cards and flowers.
Blinking at the void that was once full of life.
Open-mouthed at the way the world carries on—people walking to work, collecting their children, meeting for dinner, flowers blooming—utterly unchanged, as if nothing seismic had just happened.
Because, of course, for them, it hadn’t.
And now, somehow, I am one of those people.
I can go about my day, pick up dog poo in the garden, take out the trash, shop for food, have meaningful conversations with clients, create new resources, laugh at something silly.
But I know that people freshly inside grief cannot. Or if they can, they wonder how on earth they can.
I don’t want this level of pain for anyone. And yet, it happens, everywhere, all the time. Sometimes terribly close by.
It’s heartbreaking. And it’s unavoidable.
I am surprised by how much I am moved by all the loss happening around me. It pains me to imagine a child without their dad. A wife without her husband. A parent without their child.
It’s almost unimaginable. Except I remember. I know exactly what it is like. That deep, unforgettable knowing of what it is to suddenly find gaping craters where, moments ago, there were strong, living, breathing loved ones.
Again, I wonder—how does the world carry on? How does the world carry it? Bear the weight of it all?
It’s unfathomable. And yet, somehow, it does.
Death happens, and life carries on.
Over and over and over.
Because that is what the world does.
That is what life does.
It dies. Always. Relentlessly.
And life carries on.
