Managing Death:

In May 2013 my oldest daughter died. After that my two brothers died within one year of her death.
Then my favorite brother in law died the following year.
That is four deaths in less than three years.
I speculate death had something to teach me.
Everything I was trained to do in psychotherapy regarding death did not prepare me for this experience.
Before her death I read all the literature as a trained psychotherapist.
I thought I understand death, grief, transitions and the emotional reactions to death.
WRONG.
Very little in the literature and my experiences were similar.
All I can assume is that managing death and dying is a very personal experience and writing about the experience and watching others handle the issues can be very different from managing the experience when it happens to you.

In October 1967 I was present in Roseville Hospital when my daughter Stasi was born.
Stasi as we called her, was born breach.
She was to be a home birth baby but when she turned breach, the doctor told us he needed to take her to the hospital, so as I had an agreement with him that if an emergency happened, I would be permitted to be present with my wife for the delivery.
A little ahead of my time, as in 1967 most fathers sat in the waiting room waiting to hear if their baby was a boy or a girl.
I was trained to be present to support her mother breathe and manage the birthing challenge, so the hospital reluctantly permitted me inside the hospital room while they delivered Stasi.
In 2013, I was present in a Kaiser hospital when Stasi died.
I was completely unaware she was going to die. I was not prepared to deal with death, nor did I ever think Stasi would die.
But sitting there after Stasi was no longer in her dead body, I  knew Stasi as a "consciousness" was gone, and I was sitting with her dead body while she was elsewhere.
It was obvious to me that Stasi and her body were two separate entities.
Her body and her consciousness or soul or spirit were two seperate entities.
Stasi was a consciousness, that had left her body like a passenger on a train leaves the train when they arrive at their destination.
Where was she?
Was she in heaven, in the bardo, on the ceiling, or completely erased.
The answer for me was simple, I have no idea.
I'm not religious so i don't believe in an firm answer.
I do believe however she existed for 45 years as a consciousness and that she was now departed from her body.
I had this strange feeling she was sitting on the ceiling watching me kiss her hand and talking to her dead body and telling her how much I loved her.
After a period of time my son came into the room and said "dad, the hospital wants you to leave".
I was in shock and so I jumped up and left bewildered while my son drove me home.
For the next six weeks I just sat on the couch and looked out the window trying to make sense of what had happened.
I don't recall very much of those six weeks.
I don't recall anything really until the mother of Stasi called me and told me Stasi's friends wanted to have a celebration for her life.
Then it occurred to me that her death was not really the tragedy, rather never having her as my first born child would be the real traegedy.
It became clear that Stasi was a wonderful gift for 45 years.
I really wanted a daughter and I got that wish in 1967.
Stasi was a larger than life.
Her sense of humor was so much fun.
She developed a personality that made her a natural born leader.
She loved deeply and was deeply loved in return.
She was very accomplished in so many fields.
She created a very successful marriage with her husband for 17 years.
She started working at 18 years as a waitress and never stopped climbing lifes ladder of success.
She loved children and was a child like adult. No one was more fun with small children than Stasi.
She started working as a waitress and ended up as a highly successful real estate agent in San Francisco. Working her way up the ladder of life with only a high school education.
Stasi's life was such an incredible success. She travelled all over the world. She took up belly dancing. She worked to make the planet a better place to live.
She was a total success in so many ways.
She was a gift to me, her mother, her sister and her brother.
She was a gift to her husband, her coworkers and her friends.
She was very loved by so many poeple.
As I let her successes in and as I thought of all the gifts she gave her family and her friends, the more I realized that the real tragedy of her life is not being present today.
The gift was her life, her love, her passions.
To never have had her would be the real tragedy.
Her death was merely the ending of her life at 45 rather than after I was dead.
The tragedy was in the timing of her inevitable death.
No parent wants to see their child die before them.
No friend wanted that friend to vanish too soon.
No husband wants to have his wife die in the middle of their loving marriage.
But on the other hand, no one would be happy never having Stasi in their life.
So for me, death is not just a tragedy, it is inevitable, and no one who loves life has the timing of that death known.
So for me I focus on the fabulous gift I received for 45 years, and I will not allow my thinking to postulate of 46 years or 47 years.
I accept her death at 45 and am so grateful for those 45years.
And as long as I celebrate her 45 years and not allow my thoughts to think of more years with Stasi, I am merely happy to  have had her as my first born child.
This is not to say I don't have bad days when I miss her presence in the now.
Of course I feel intense sadness sometimes.
Sometimes it feels overwhelming.
But 90% of the time I am so grateful Stasi was my first born daughter, and the 10% of the times when I experience deep sadness, I try to remind myself that the real tragedy would be to never have had her at all.