Staring into the face of death
One of my very best friends, Dorthe, lost her mother on Friday night. She dies of cancer. Even though she was diagnosed last summer, she was better this spring and the doctors were hoping for a full recovery. Suddenly she got worse this summer, and I know Dorthe and her family are now in shock at how fast they lost her. You always get so helpless when it comes to people loosing loved ones. I wish there was something I could do to take her pain away, or at least to ease it some – but there really isn’t anything you can do – except being there. Most of us have lost loved ones at some point in our lives, and we all know that when facing death all you really can do is trying to go on, one day at a time, trying to rebuild your life without the loved one in it – and hoping that some day when you wake up, you will recognise that the pain isn’t as bad as it was the day before.
When seeing friends or families going through something like this, I’m always reminded of my greatest loss of a loved on so far in my life, one of my very best friend, I’d almost say he was my soul-mate, Öystein. He died on the 25th of January 2000, only 27 years old. The first days after I got the news just seem like a fog of tears and pain to me now when I look back, and the day of his funeral, which was about a month after his death (he died on vacation in India and it did take some time for his body to come back to Norway) I still think is the hardest day in my life. Seeing his coffin and realizing that he was actually gone. The first 6 – 7 months after that I thought about him every day, crying a lot at night – often almost not being able to believe that he wasn’t anymore. After a year or so one day I suddenly realized that Öystein hadn’t actually been on my mind for a couple of days – and it felt strange, but also a relief that I could think about him without starting to cry.
The pain never totally goes away though. Like I said, every time someone close to me is hurt by death – I think of Öystein – and the pain of loosing him comes back, I might even start to cry again if I allow myself to really feel the pain, most often I try not to – I have felt that pain more than enough, and crying for him won’t bring him back. The tears I cry back then when it happened were tears to deal with the pain, to get through the emotions – the tears I’ll cry now are those of hopelessness when staring into the face of death, tears of anger at a universe that takes away our loved ones to early and to sudden. So I try not to, but sometimes I can’t help myself.
So, I know something of what Dorthe is going through right now – even though I also recognize that every person is unique when it comes to situations like this. The emotions are not the same, the reactions are not the same – and the ways of getting through it are not the same. There really isn’t much else I can do than being here, in every way that I can!
When seeing friends or families going through something like this, I’m always reminded of my greatest loss of a loved on so far in my life, one of my very best friend, I’d almost say he was my soul-mate, Öystein. He died on the 25th of January 2000, only 27 years old. The first days after I got the news just seem like a fog of tears and pain to me now when I look back, and the day of his funeral, which was about a month after his death (he died on vacation in India and it did take some time for his body to come back to Norway) I still think is the hardest day in my life. Seeing his coffin and realizing that he was actually gone. The first 6 – 7 months after that I thought about him every day, crying a lot at night – often almost not being able to believe that he wasn’t anymore. After a year or so one day I suddenly realized that Öystein hadn’t actually been on my mind for a couple of days – and it felt strange, but also a relief that I could think about him without starting to cry.
The pain never totally goes away though. Like I said, every time someone close to me is hurt by death – I think of Öystein – and the pain of loosing him comes back, I might even start to cry again if I allow myself to really feel the pain, most often I try not to – I have felt that pain more than enough, and crying for him won’t bring him back. The tears I cry back then when it happened were tears to deal with the pain, to get through the emotions – the tears I’ll cry now are those of hopelessness when staring into the face of death, tears of anger at a universe that takes away our loved ones to early and to sudden. So I try not to, but sometimes I can’t help myself.
So, I know something of what Dorthe is going through right now – even though I also recognize that every person is unique when it comes to situations like this. The emotions are not the same, the reactions are not the same – and the ways of getting through it are not the same. There really isn’t much else I can do than being here, in every way that I can!
posted by Lena M Bakke @ 11:54 AM
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