Understanding

I believe that everything happens for a reason...maybe not for anything significant (at least that we can figure out) but still, a reason. I think I work in a nursing home because of my confusion related to death. This will sound strange, but until I started working in long-term care, I was never able to figure out death. I understand that a body only lasts for so long, that the mind wears out, but I'd never been around someone going through that. It just seemed to me that death was like going away...I've only seen one dead person, ever, and at funerals prefer to think that they were just away for an extended period of time.

When someone dies, you have to make peace with what you thought of them and who they were to you. This is difficult when you have very little experience creating closure with those who are alive when they leave. I have found that it is easier to do this on a smaller scale, with people you hardly knew, and transitioning eventually to those who mean the world to you.

It still doesn't seem like Grandad is gone. And because of the bizarre way I relate to the difficult and uncomfortable, I honestly wouldn't be shocked if I saw him at Thanksgiving...I'd just ask him where he went and how the weather was. I know this isn't going to happen, but it is still my way of viewing death.