Death Is Often Quiet

It is one of the most difficult things for lay people to understand.

Usually there is a moment to collect my thoughts as the phone rings.  I speak slowly and deliberately.

Something has changed.

They are carefully chosen words to cushion the unavoidable plunge into darkness.  I know. I know. 

It happens dozens of times a year.  Death follows me home after a hard day of work.  It buzzes against my skin and awakens me from a deep sleep.  It yanks me out of exam rooms and interrupts family dinners.

Such irony for a boy excused from class in second grade to be accompanied home by a family friend.  My mother pulled me in close and whispered that my father was gone, even as relatives sat in the living room glumly.  But now I have become my mother and guide families through this awful blackness. 

I wonder how it affects me.  While others struggle with shadows, I see quite clearly.  My eyes have adapted so expertly that often I feign empathy as friends relate the tragedies of the day.

I didn't know my career would lead here.  I didn't know that I would be good at it.

I pray, my dear reader, never to meet you in this lonely place roaming beside me.  But, if I do, I might offer a bit of wisdom.

Death is often quiet.

Pain should be the exception, not the rule.

And suffering, it turns out, is mostly left for those who remain.