On Death and Dying
On Halloween of 2017 I was driving on Hwy 151 between Waupun and Fond du Lac, on my way to take my son trick-or-treating. My grandmother, Kate the Great (as she was called), was buried there in the Rock River Cemetery only a couple months earlier. My son and I had been at her house with my grandfather and aunt Louisa just before that, getting our faces painted by a friend. It was hard to go there, to see my grandpa looking so lost and uncertain without my grandma by his side. And it was hard for us...hard to think that she would never be there to see another moment of our lives. I was closer to my grandmother than I had been to any of my other relatives. And she adored my son, always showed him the same unconditional love she had shown everyone she knew during her 84 years on this earth. The holes in our hearts that were created by her swift and unexpected departure ached with undeniable urgency that day. But, as we approached the cemetery, a beautiful bald eagle swooped past our ...