On Death and Dying

You'd think after all these episodes with Grey's Anatomy, the nights sobbing over deaths of imagined people, that I would give up watching the show, but I seem to be addicted, addicted to the characters, my "friends," their lives and choices and the certainty that we are all going to die.

Perhaps it's the impending anniversary of my mom's death, or really just the fact that she died at all, that gives these episodes extra import (then again, I am a drama queen), but I can't help but cry over every death and ponder, with every death, the meaning of life.

I have my faith, but there are moments when I wonder if all of this is worth it; if the moments of joy and happiness and love are really worth all the moments of tears and pain and anguish. Moments like now, as I watch Izzie sign a DNR and convince her husband that it's necessary and I remember the moment my mom told me she had signed a DNR and the moment I understood that that was the reason the ambulance didn't race her to the hospital with lights flashing and sirens blaring. Death is inevitable, as certain as birth, perhaps even more so. And while I believe, with all my heart, that eternity lies in death, that birth into "real life," I also know, with all my heart, that the goodbye of death is painful and the separation of death between the living and dead is enormous.

I just can't wrap my head around death and life and what it means to be immortal beings living mortal lives.