Confronting Death

I don't remember how old I was or the name of the book. I do recall that it was a Dick Francis and right at the end the bad guy died.

So what?

Well, it was the first book I ever read where anyone died. I'd grown up on a diet of Enid Blytons, Nancy Drews and Hardy Boys and no one ever died in those books. Right at the end, the police would show up, round up all the bad guys and take them off to jail. So the first time a bad guy actually died, I was shocked. He was trapped in a car that had been driven into a lake and I remember reading and re-reading the finale thinking I'd missed the line where he surfaced, gasping for air.

No, I hadn't. He died.

I was more stunned than upset. Shocked disbelief is the closest I can get to describing it. And somehow that is still the feeling I get when confronted with death. A feeling that it's not true, that at some point that person will surface once again. Maybe my strong belief in reincarnation sustains that feeling. Or maybe that belief was born out of that feeling. I don't know.

Years ago, when my mother woke us up one summer morning to tell us that our grandma had died, my sister dissolved into tears. I sat down and tried to digest that fact, willing myself to have the same reaction. I couldn't. Even now, when I think of her, I think of her in the present tense.

Disbelief. Still.