Thought of the day: Death Does Not Discriminate

Do you know the one place you never find any discrimination?

Death.

It's funny, really. How much time we spend on Earth fighting over who is right, who is more successful, who is the best person to make the decisions.

When death sees everyone as equal.

She creeps up on you, whoever you are. Young, old, sick, healthy. She really doesn't give a shit.

Sometimes she gives you plenty of warning. You see her coming in the test results you didn't want, or in the lines appearing around your eyes.

Sometimes she's quicker. You hear her in the sound of skidding breaks, the echo of a gunshot, the silence that follows an explosion.

Everyone knows death, it's a universal thing that transcends race, language and culture. Every child senses her from an early age, creeping through the landscape of life.

But few of us really know her. Some of us only know her from the news. Some of us from friends. Some of us hear her mentioned briefly in conversations, or sense her lurking in the background of special events. Sometimes she enters more loudly, weaving between friends and loved ones, mowing them down without a care for who they are or what their plans were for the future.

You might think you're prepared. You might have seen death before, you know how she works. You know what you have to do, who you have to call, and the arrangements you have to make. You know that you must talk about your grief to heal, and you know you will bottle it all up anyway.

But when it happens, every preparation you might have made, mentally and physically, completely goes out of the window.

Because every encounter with death is unique, and it affects us differently each time.

I knew death from a distance. For years, I heard her name, and knew what she could do. But the two times I saw her, this is when we really got acquainted.

The first time I saw death, I healed through prayer.

My grandma had told me time and time again that when she went, my grandad would be waiting for her, in heaven, under God's care. This hope made it easier somehow. My mum and I spent two days at her bedside. We barely ate or slept. The tea went cold on the nightstand. And while she drifted in and out of sleep, we whispered loving words, and shared stories from her youth.

And when the end came, it was so beautiful. Painful, but beautiful.

I held her hand gently, and I felt it relax as she sighed her last breath like a release. She hadn't had an easy life; war, loss and poverty had left their scars on her soul. But she never showed it. Her love for us became her beacon of positivity, and in that final moment, I knew she was at peace, because we were there with her.

The second time death arrived, she took God with her, and the transition from believer to atheist hurt me almost as much as my grief.

The reason for this drastic fallout was because this time, she arrived too early.

My aunt still had half her life left to live. She had places she wanted to go, people she wanted to meet. Her family needed her to stay, but death had other plans.

I remember the moment it happened. The sun was just setting. The final rays of the day fell through the plastic Venetian blinds, casting shadowy lines across the hospital sheets and her pale face.

But she wasn't there anymore.

I watched her take her last breath, and in that moment, I felt an anger I hadn't felt before. I felt dangerous. I wanted to scream at God, but He wasn't there anymore. And when I walked out of those automatic hospital doors, I left Him behind inside.

But my aunt knew this was going to happen. She knew me so well, and she knew I would blame God for it all. Who else was there to blame?

A few months earlier, she gave me a small silver angel, only about the size of a ten pence piece. On the back of this angel, the word Faith was inscribed. I had clutched it every night in prayer while her health worsened, and when she disappeared, I hid the angel in the bottom of a drawer. For months, I forgot it was there. Until I found it in the middle of my bedroom floor one afternoon.

Don't ask me how it got there. Maybe it was divine intervention. Maybe I pulled it out with my clothes that morning and didn't notice until later on.

Either way, the sight of it brought a bittersweet smile to my face.

Life without hope is pretty dire. It doesn't matter whether she sent it or not. It didn't matter that it would take me months to find any fragment of faith again.

All that mattered is that while I was in depths of grief, her gift of hope kept me going.

And sometimes, that's all you can do, and all you need to do. Just keep going.

Death is cruel, but she is also a part of life. Giving her a personality makes her less frightening, as if she is one of us, as if I could pass her in the street one day, as if she isn't this terrible looming force over our world.

The hardest part of death is that we don't talk about it enough. Maybe one day it will be as easy as breathing. Until then, I wish you luck with your grieving process.

There are no words of comfort, only these truths:

It's going to hurt for a while. It's going to feel impossible at times. You will cry and you will laugh, sometimes at the same time. But there are no rules or expectations.

Grief is messy and strange. It's brutal and life changing. It will make you question things you thought were certainties. It will mess with your head and your heart, but it won't last forever.

However you deal with it, know that you are not alone in your pain. Because death affects us all, and it doesn't matter who or where you are.

Just do the best you can.