Death brings challenging times for all

Normally, I'm a pretty upbeat writer. I believe there are too many rants and not enough raves in the press, and I try to balance things out where I can. So when the Opinions editor asked me to write for this week's issue, I started tossing around all sorts of wonderful ideas to talk about.

All that changed when I arrived home Saturday to learn that there had been a death in the family.It wasn't a great shock. His health had been failing for months. His legs were weak, he had trouble standing up, and he wasn't eating. He had finally lost all control of his bowels, and I had received the call Thursday evening that it would all be over by the weekend. But that didn't make the grief of my own family any less difficult.

I know that some of you reading this will know exactly what I'm talking about. I also know that most Tech students don't spend a lot of time contemplating death. Given the rate of medical technology and our own standards of health, most of us will still be here in 60 or 70 years, leading happy, productive, fulfilling lives, so death is a fact of life that we usually brush to the side to concentrate on more important or immediate matters.

Now, I'm not condemning anybody for anything. But one of the lessons I've learned in my time here at Tech is that there are a lot of things you never really understand until you've experienced them firsthand. I don't understand romantic relationships all that well because I've never been in one. I don't get foreign cultures as well as I should because I've never traveled abroad. I often fail to grasp why parents act the way they do because I have no children of my own.

And I never really understood death until it came knocking at my door.

It has helped me realize the extent of the grief others go through when they face similar tragedies. It has given me a basis of experience to share and connect with friends and family. And it has reinforced the notion that I ought never to take anything for granted, a principle I try to live by every day.While at Tech, I've also learned that, despite the diversity of religious and philosophical beliefs among the student body, at a fundamental level, those beliefs have more in common than we realize. We all know, somehow, intuitively, that death is not the end but the next step in life, something that a friend had to remind me of this past weekend, and I say this even though I'm not a very religious man. We cry because we know they're very much alive, but we won't get to see them again for a long time.

I think most of us would also agree that there are greater forces at work in the world than we understand, forces that influence our lives and help us out when we need it the most. I have to wonder if it was a mere coincidence that I was asked to write for this issue two days before I received that phone call.

I've also found myself thinking a lot about love. The human race is a remarkably passionate species, and we can form the strongest bonds imaginable with others, bonds so powerful that they transcend gender and race and culture and even species.

And that's okay, but the ultimate test of our own personal strength comes in how we carry on with our lives after the one we love is gone. I think I finally understand what it means when people say that we keep others alive in our hearts and in our thoughts. I spent a great deal of time thinking about how he first came into our family, how we grew up together, and how he was an important part of my life, and in a way, I found it to be a source of comfort.

So now I'm faced with the challenge of carrying on with my own life. I'll have to deal with a routine and a household that feels different and a little emptier because he's not there. It will take some getting used to. There's a part of me that's still grieving as I write this, and I'll never, ever forget about him.

I wish he didn't have to go, but he was very old, and he had lived a good, long, happy life surrounded by the people he loved. I know that he's being well-cared for now, and that he's being well-cared for now, and that he's waiting quietly, patiently, obediently for the rest of us to come home.

What a good dog.