Thoughts on death

It's been a little over a week since we said goodbye to Amber's mom. It was pretty sad, and I had a pretty hard time during my little part of the eulogy. This is my 2nd family member to pass away over the past year, and it's tough.

One thing that's really struck me across the face is the whole issue of mortality. As a child, you think your parents are going to be around forever, and up until last week, I've never considered the fact that my folks are going to die one day. I can't imagine what life would be without them. They've been the constant in my life for the entirety of my existence. And this is what makes it so hard for me with my mother in-law's death. I honestly don't know what to do for my wife apart from just being there for her. My natural inclination when anything bad happens to those I love is to fix it, or at least try to put myself in that person's shoes and establish some empathy. But now, I don't know. Losing a parent has to be incredibly painful and numbing, and I just don't know what to do.

Amber is a very, very strong woman and has yet to really let me see her grieve over her mother's death. Partly because she's been so busy dealing with all of the practicalities of what's happened - planning the funeral service, figuring out who's staying where, getting her mother's papers in order, cleaning out her home. The list goes on and on. I'm just afraid that at some point she's going to lose it. And I'm angry at her sisters and her brother. Intellectually I know it's only because we live the closest to her mother (one sister is in Taneytown, MD, the other is in Chicago and her brother is in Oregon) that Amber is the one who's had all of the responsibility fall on her, but she's the 4th child, the 2nd youngest. This is the time when older siblings really need to step up and take some responsibility. But, as with most things, that hasn't (luckily, Amber never reads this blog, and neither do her siblings). Whoa, I sound like my grandmother now - "You're the oldest" she's been telling me since I was around 7 or 8.

Anyway, back to the issue of mortality. I guess if I was a person with strong faith, I'd be comforted in the fact that my loved ones are going to heaven, but I'm not. I don't have any idea what happens to us when we die, and that scares the shit out of me. It'd be nice if we ended up chilling on some beach, or floating around the clouds. But what if this is it? What if nothing happens, and we just stop being?