Death is Best Served Without Regret
Most of us have experienced the pangs that death can unveil. We have stood bed-side waiting for parents to pass or watched helplessly as loved ones suffered from terminal disease. We have bid adieu to grandparents who lived long, but still felt as if they were taken too soon. We have suffered tragedy. We have received that call that turns our world from light to dark.
I recently received what I thought was that call. It was actually a text message, but no less troublesome. The message started with the words, grandma has fallen…
I paused nervously before I carefully read the entire message. To my relief, my grandmother hadn’t passed. She had taken a terrible fall. She had fractured her neck and broke her hip and wrist. My grandmother is 91 years old. Her name is Helen.
Shortly after Helen’s accident my father and I took the six hour journey to visit her in the hospital. She was never far from our minds as we drove. We quickly located Helen’s hospital room after we arrived. I didn’t recognize her when I walked in and said to my father that we had entered the wrong room. He quietly pointed to a woman lying in a bed nearest me. It was Helen. Her eyes were closed. Her neck was constrained with a brace. Her wrist had a cast on it. She had just endured hip surgery. Her condition was alarming, but it was the frail expression on Helen’s wrinkled face that struck me most. It was the first time I had ever thought of Helen as old.
As a child, I visited Helen nearly every summer and Christmas and often many times in between. As I grew into adulthood visits became infrequent. I am ashamed to admit that I have rarely seen her over the last few years. As I visited with Helen in the hospital, I kept asking myself, why? Why hadn’t I made a more concerted effort to see her? Why wasn’t I cherishing the time I had left with her?
There is a familiar family photo of Helen taken when she was young and pregnant with my father. She was beautiful back then and had her entire life ahead of her. My mind pondered on that photo and I imagined Helen’s journey from that beautiful young woman in the photo to the frail woman in the hospital bed before me; how her story was my heritage. I made a quiet promise to myself that when Helen finally returned home, I would visit and learn all I could about her; allow my children to do the same. Helen’s story would then forever be a part of our lives and it would bind us together.
We shouldn’t wait to cherish those we love because that call will come. It will turn our light to darkness and fill us with unavoidable sorrow. Death is difficult enough. It is best served without regret.
