It's just my journal.

The Concept of Death.

As a small child, I never really understood the concept of what we call "death." It was first brought up to me when my great uncle Tex died. I wasn't any older than two years old, but I still have extremely vivid memories of the funeral. 

We were in this huge church where they served food and I remember dressing in all black, although I didn't quite understand why. The architecture was beautiful and everyone I'd ever known and loved was there, but they all seemed sad. I didn't know why. Finally, we had to go see the body and I asked my mother why uncle Tex was lying there. She responded,

"He's going to a better place." I, of course, asked where and got "The spirit world" as a response. I didn't quite grasp the concept. To me, he was just asleep and they were going to put in him into the ground so he could be transported to this place I'd never heard of before. 

When it was our turn to pay our respects, I saw my mom crying and started to worry, but I didn't say anything. Instead, I just stared at my uncle Tex's body. My immediate reaction was that he looked cold... but I had the thought that maybe he'd wake up and try to take me with him. I didn't want to go, so I got scared and didn't want to touch him. 

Of course, everyone urged me to at least hug him, so I did. Just as I thought, he was cold to the touch. I remember telling my mother,

"Mommy, he's cold. Should we give him a blanket to take with him?" She told me that he was fine and that we should go. After that, I don't remember much. So let's skip to when the family dog, Oscar, died.

I was four at the time, and, I'm going to be honest with you. Oscar hated me, but I didn't care. I personally had loved him. He was old, blind, and he wasn't very smart, but I loved him with all of my heart. He'd gone to the doctor one day to be put down, but no one had told me. So when we came to pick him up, he was lying on a table taking his last breaths. He was dying.

By now, I had a perfect understanding that he was about to fall into the never-ending sleep uncle Tex had gone into. He was going where Uncle Tex had gone. He was going to be put into the ground and he would never come back. I didn't want Oscar to leave me like Uncle Tex did. I remember standing there, telling Oscar that I didn't want him to leave, but if he had to, it was okay. I remember petting him and telling him I'd miss him. I stood there until Oscar wasn't breathing anymore and his small body was starting to lose its warmth. I remember them burying him and us just leaving him there, lying in the ground. 

I was five when my great grandmother Mary died. I don't have many memories of her, but I remember that I'd try to visit her everyday. My grandmother and I would bring her different types of food and I'd sit next to her and tell her stories about school. Now that I think about it, I'd never heard her speak. She mostly communicated by pointing at things and gesturing, but I never really questioned it. She apparently didn't speak english, so my grandmother would translate my stories. I've looked at all the old photos that my great grandmother and I were in. In every single one of them, she was staring at me. To this day I'm told about how much she loved me.

One day, she came home from the doctor with a stay-at-home nurse. She'd been bedridden. After that, it didn't take long for her health to deteriorate. I was with my grandmother, Dorothy, watching a program about turtles when my grandmother told me that Great grandma Mary was going to die. I remember the first thing I asked was,

"Why does she have to die?" To which my grandmother replied,

"When people are old, they have to die." I remember having terror flow throughout my body at the thought of my grandma Dorothy dying and going to the Spirit world with Uncle Tex, Oscar and soon my "Grandma G" would join them. It was scary. So I told my grandmother,

"Grandma, don't you ever get old, okay?" She was silent for a few moments before simply saying,

"I won't."  That's all I remember of my Great Grandma Mary's death because we never went to the funeral.  We never went to say goodbye.

By the time I lost my next relative, I was seven. She'd had cancer. She was only seventy-five when she died. Her name was Minnie, my grandma. She lived in Minnesota and she'd gotten extremely sick. My father had gone a few days before us to take care of her on her last days. 

I am never  going to forget the day she died. I'd been playing in my bedroom when I heard mom, who'd been confirming our plane tickets to fly out tomorrow to see Grandma Minnie one last time, bawling. I remember feeling my heart sink at my mother's distress, so I ran over to see what was wrong. When I asked, my mom just silently handed me the phone so dad could tell me. I remember asking,

"Daddy, why is mommy sad?" I remember him sighing and in the saddest voice I've ever heard, he replied,

"Grandma Minnie died in her sleep last night." I remember feeling my world crashing down around me. She was gone. She was gone and she'd died a thousand miles away without me. I never said goodbye. I never told her I loved her. And she'd left. I didn't even realize that I'd started crying at first, but I tried very hard not to so I wouldn't upset my baby brother. I gave the phone back to my mother. Afterwards, I remember staring at my brother and telling him while he slept,

"So, our grandma went away last night. She fell asleep...and she's never waking up. I'm going to miss her. You won't ever really know her...which is sad. She was so nice, Sammy, you would have loved her. She was there when you were born, you know. She loved you so much. She laughed when I said that you were orange and she said that you were beautiful all the same...goodnight, Sammy." Or something like that. After that, we went to Montana to bury her in her home town. 

I remember the fact that they didn't bury her, but they cremated her and poured her ashes in the little creek where my grandpa John's, whom I had never met,  ashes were. They were together now. I remember my cousin Anthony crying, but I felt so numb. There were no tears. I felt numb for so long after that. I thought something was wrong. That my feelings had blown away in the wind along with the ashes of my grandma Minnie.

I'm going to be honest with you, I've never really gotten over that. It's been years. The concept of death has confused me since the day my great Uncle Tex died. It's confusing. You fall into a never-ending sleep and you leave the world behind you to do something. No one knows what death is, and people are so afraid of the unknown, that we've created things like Heaven to comfort us. I will never know until the day I die what the spirit world really is. All I have is the concept that there is some place where the dead go to leave peacefully amongst each other for however long they want for comfort.