On Death (and Naming)

I think it’s always hard when someone you know dies, even if you didn’t have a particularly wonderful relationship with the person. It signals an end, and we don’t like ends, we really like beginnings and middles.

I’m still getting used to the idea of death. The idea of finality.

Our culture does a really crap job of preparing us to deal with death. Even as I was growing up, I didn’t see my pets die. Pets are a great way to realize a final loss. Our pets always got sick and sulked away somewhere in the country to go die. I was young, and I didn’t understand that they hadn’t just chosen to go do something else.

Gramma’s death was really the first time I had someone close to me die. Watching mom go through her grief, which I don’t think will ever be resolved (she says it can’t be resolved. That gramma was her best friend and she misses her so much and just can’t accept and can’t believe that she’s gone. And I think it’s so interesting how mom's family immortalized their mother, believing she was greater than the power of life and death and that she would live forever. I think she will live forever in the things she’s woven with other people, the circus museum and memorabilia, her lineage, her name, her store, her customers and friends, her legacy, her bloodline. But the woman dies. The myth can live on, but the body dies.)

Then with Julie back in December and now Paul—these people I was close to at one time, but drifted drifted drifted very far away from. And ultimately, at the time of their passing, didn’t have relationships with them. …

The absolute corporeal end just puts me in a really reflective mood. I am awash with spiritual confusion. By that I mean, I don’t know what I believe any more, and don’t know if I believe anything at all. Faith (and I use that term in the loosest way possible) takes effort. You have to remember to think about it, or remember that you’re committing to the idea that something is there. The only constant, so Descartes, is that voice in your head. Ergo cogito sum. And then when people die, do they hear their voices? Do they think? I don’t believe we think identity is what makes us real. I don’t believe people approach the world from a singular perspective and that all reality is subjective. I think people rely on a shared sense of objective reality – at least for a few things, like calendar year, the “present” and “past” (chronology, space, time), axioms, etc.

Reflective. Brings up a lot. For instance. With Paul (Myers, that is), she asked me if I didn’t have a relationship with that side of the family really, and I didn’t share a bloodline, and didn’t trust those people, then why would I keep my last name? Why not change it? I gave her a laundry list of reasons, including but not limited to the fact that I don’t particularly like the name, and that it’s political, in that I thought I was giving something up in getting married so I might as well keep my last name. And of course, that women’s name change started because women were property and it was a way trace property transfer. Yuck.

But perhaps more importantly, it brought up that I’ve been thinking about this. Recently. I was talking with someone about our plans to start a family, Jeff and I. Yes we want to have kids, but not yet. After my master’s program. And I was thinking about what last name we’ll give our kids, and thinking I don’t want to wait too long, because I know Bill wants to see his grandchildren. I anticipate the day I can see Bill hold his grandchildren. Can’t wait to see that smile. I’m sure he’ll tear up. How couldn’t he. And also that Jeff is the last of his line, and how Bill has been the kind of man I always wanted for a father, and has kind of been a father figure to me, without even trying. And then Jessica asked, why not hyphenate? I said because Jeff won’t, and if one person is going to hyphenate then both should, or it’s not even and fair. So that’s lame. But then I thought about the kids, and how it’s kind of impractical to have two names, because the general public, it’s its general hurry, shortens everything, and just uses the first name anyway. All of this is too absurd. Naming conventions. Lame.

Haley’s Maple

The tree was a young tree, just like me. Looking at our house from the street, it was in the side yard, to the left of the house. It seemed so tall, but it must have been only 8 feet at most. Skinny trunk, swaying leaves or still, depending on the season—I had a tree. It was the first thing I remember feeling that I owned. And I was proud of it. My dad gave it to me. The leaves were green green in the spring and summer, and the color turned, hued and varied and brown jewel tones in autumn. I remember sitting under it, playing around and around its trunk, taking its precious fallen leaves and making impromptu collages on the concrete outside our front door. That tree witnessed my childhood.