In Memoriam...

I read obituaries.  That’s the section I read first when I pick up the newspaper.  I don’t mean to be macabre about it – it’s just my favorite section.  It reminds me of how precious life is.  It reminds me to live more.

I didn’t start reading the obituaries until my brother Tom passed away.  Four years ago, he went into the hospital on March 12, and died 25 days later on April 6.  He had melanoma, and my mom had to write his obituary.

No mother should ever have to do that.  It wasn’t supposed to happen that way – but it did.  She wrote a testament to his life and how beautifully he lived it.  I know Tom would have been pleased.  I was.

It’s hard to think that all those people filling up the obituary pages have really died.  They look so vibrant in their pictures.  I often wonder who had the task of writing their obituary, summing up their life in a small little column, and how they must have labored over it.

As I browse each one, I quietly wonder how they died.  I wonder who else might have passed away from melanoma.  And since I am now a breast cancer survivor, whether there’s anyone on the page who has died from breast cancer.  I can’t help it.  Once you do the tango with cancer, you wonder.

I also think about the people who have been left behind.   Oftentimes, I’ll read “In Memoriam.”  It’s the section where you can submit something about a loved one who might have passed years before.   Many people write one around the anniversary of the day their loved one passed away.  The date you never, ever forget, year after year.

In all of my reading of this small section, this past Sunday’s took my breath away.  In the San Diego Union-Tribune, Joe wrote a letter to his wife, Anna, on the fifth anniversary of her passing.

He wrote that he missed her and he didn’t think he would make it five years without her and this:  “…Today at 2 p.m. it will be approximately 21,035,520 heart beats longing to see that look of love in your big green eyes.  Thanks be to Jesus I will see you again.  All of us miss you terribly … All of us long for you daily.  There is a big hole in our lives.  Your loving husband, Joe.”

That is why I read the obituaries.  In just a few words, the memories of someone can come to life again. You can jump into their world and envision them living.  You can see the love that surrounded them as they lived and still surrounds them once they have died.

Even though four years have passed, I think about my brother all the time.  Often times, after he died, I wrote letters to him. I just couldn’t grasp that he was really gone forever.  It was my way of keeping my brother, my friend, my laughter alive. I imagined the responses he would make to me and in those times that I would write, I didn’t miss him as much, the hole in my heart wasn’t as painful.

I hope in writing the Memoriam, Joe’s heart isn’t as painful, either.