I went to get Thai food with a group of friends last night and it came up that one of my favorite places to be is graveyards. You see I have a somewhat different outlook on death and dying than most do. Most recently I was in Arizona with my Grandma who was dying. I helped her do everything that she possibly needed and it was one of the best things I could have ever done. In the end we had her in hospice for a little while because there was three of us that were taking care of her and we all were miserably sick at the same time as well. She was only in there for about two days before passing, but the atmosphere at the hospice was something I have never experienced before. There was a sense of waiting, true, but on top of that was love and respect. There was no delusions as to what was happening to every person there, and when Grandma passed it was a relief from the pain that we could all see her experiencing. In the past one of my grandparents passing has had little to no effect on me since we were never really all that close to any of them.. geographically or otherwise. Since I was around and had been for a while when Grandma died I got to see the direct effect that she had on so many people. I watched one of my church leaders break down and cry in front of an entire congregation. So many people came up to me to tell me how she had been an inspiration to them, a good friend, someone that other people could go to for help and she would help as much as she possibly could. Her funeral is on Friday morning. In my religion these sorts of things are always more like inpromptu family reunions than anything else, and for once my entire family will be there. That in and of it self should be entertaining.
But this all brings up the question of what does death really mean to us, as human beings? For me, I am LDS and basically it is just a step in our eternal progression. We belive in life after death, in becoming more than we are now, in learning everything that we can here and re-applying it in our future life. But what do we want to be remembered for? I have at least two grandparents that I have been old enought to recognize the impact that they made on the world, and that I should be proud to be one who inheritade that legacy.
