Author: Ben Wilkoff

An honest encounter with death is not something I am prepared for, most of the time.

When the actress I only knew from The Crown, a former queen in my eyes, said that she was sorry that the rabbit died, that her hawk was to blame, but so are we all. We are to blame for our own deaths. We are to blame for one another's deaths. Responsible for them.

And more important still, we are all going to die. And that knowledge is why we do almost everything we do. The transient nature of who we are, and why we are here is never so very far away. It is why we are so obsessed with being right. With making it harder for others, when we could just shut the fuck up.

But, when you face it. When you see yourself as you are for the majority of your non-existence, as a dead man, you know that it has been an honest encounter. You don't have to pretend that it won't happen, because you already know.

And then it is not about my death, the one that I find the least likely. It is about my father's death, the one that already happened. And my mother's death, the one that is still yet to come. The one that seems far away, but ever nearer. Theirs is the generation that is next, or that is present. And yet, it doesn't always work that way. Death is never so clean cut. It never quite follows the natural order, even for a natural process.

I do not wish for death. Not for myself and not for others, and yet it is such a constant companion that it is hard to do anything other than greet it as it is all around you. It isn't just in the hospital as the death rattle hit for my grandmother. When my father stopped me in the middle of a story to listen to the very last breath. When I heard the wet in and out, the subtle ache that was longing to let go.

When I was in the bed next to my father. Knowing that it was hours and not days. When he asked me, "Am I dying." And I told him, "not now, but soon." He knew I was telling the truth. He knew it was a conclusion, a restating of the thesis of his life. And none of the trailing sentences mattered that much. The time he would spend on the bedside commode. The time I would spend cleaning him up. Trying to care for him even a tiny amount as he had cared for me.

And he had cared for me. From beginning to end. And then death took him. And we were left, watching the TV in the waiting room as more and more people came to say goodbye. As every faculty he had left him, one by one. The thoughts, the words, the breathing.

My father is dead. And I will never have another. And I will do the same to my sons. I will leave them. Perhaps in a hospital bed, and perhaps in the middle of the night. But, odds are that each of them will say something just as I said something for my father. It is absurd. It is nonsense to leave this place. With all of its magic and consciousness.

And I do not envy them the eulogy. But, I do wish I could hear it. The fortunate part is that just like my father, I know that I am loved.