Life Changing Times

It’s all in the title – perhaps not the lightest post I’ve ever written.

Many far better talents than I have written about death. Pithy, witty, embracing dark humour while maintaining the hold on the emotions. Poetry. Books. Articles. I could go on. This post is none of those things, so skip if you are looking for light or witty.

I’ve faced my own mortality more than perhaps the average person. The average person who has had the fortune to grow up in a country where there is no war or where life is cheap. Not the person who has spent the last 8 years living in the hell that is Syria, for example.

To use a cliche, I’ve laughed in the face of death. Mostly however, I’ve been terrified anytime it’s come remotely close. Or numb. Right now it’s close to me by proxy – I’ve spent 2 weeks of a 3 weeks holiday with two friends who are facing the death of loved ones. And what a range of emotions – I want to cry with them, hold them, rage with them, wish with them it wasn’t happening. And I want it all to go the fuck away.

One in particular is too close. Too raw. I know him, became weirdly close to him in the last 9 or so months. For the past 15 years he has been a close friend of one of my closest friends – they’ve gone from work colleagues to…more than friends. Platonic, but more than friends. He is dying of cancer as I type and we don’t know if it is days or weeks, but we do know it is final.

He died a few short days after I started this post. He was surrounded in his last days by many people who could only think of themselves as it all too common in death. But died with friends who let him go with love and grace, putting aside their grief and personal feelings to hold him while he went. I miss him. Not as intensely as those who knew him longer and loved him more, but I miss him nonetheless.