Death Is Final but I Live On

© 2006 Martha. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 6/13/2006

ISBN: 1-4259-2767-X (sc)

Printed in the United States of America

Bloomington, Indiana

Contents

FOREWORD

DEATH IS FINAL

BUT I LIVE ON

FOREWORD

When we talk about life and death, for life we tend to think about the things that we’re going to do tomorrow or what happened yesterday. We think about our children and our parents, our jobs and the material things that we have gained. We think about our accomplishments and things we wish our children could accomplish.

For the most part, we are often told life is what you make it. You get out of it what you put into it. We know that for as long as we wake up, there is something to be accomplished, we can choose to do the same task we did yesterday, differently today.

Life, however, is not always coming up roses. It is not always a pleasant situation. Life shows up and some of us have to deal with Life on its on terms. We discover that our coworkers are people too, people with pains and heartaches that effect their ability to perform and interact. We discover that just because the job needs to get done, everyone is not of a mind to complete it.

We discover there are so many masks to Life, some of us have masks to be something we are not, and some of us have masks to hide what we truly are. There are masks to hide our feelings, masks to reveal our feelings. Some of us have several different masks that serve several different purposes. Some of need masks to cope at work, a mask to cope at home, a mask to cope in public, a mask to cope with our children.

Life sometimes encourages us to drink, do drugs, commit adultery, rob, steal, lie, be dishonest, and be honest but ultimately live. Life also encourages us to stop drinking, stop doing drugs, stop committing adultery, stop robbing, stealing, lying and being dishonest. Sometimes our lives are so good we would never consciously do anything to damage it but.......something happens. We lose focus, stop paying attention and make mistakes.

Because of our mistakes, putting in what we are getting out of Life, lives are destroyed, relationships damaged, jobs lost which results in lost accomplishments. Because of the choices made, we have lost our most valued possessions; our spouses, our children, our savings and everything that we have worked so hard to get. What we can lose ultimately is the most important thing to us and that is our Life. DEATH IS FINAL.

Death can be horrible, death can be tragic, death can be painless and/or painful but sometimes death can be better than life. Some people suffer so until they pray for death, they ask their loved ones to put them out of their misery. Death can wreak such havoc in lives until loved ones wish for the end. Events leading to death can make for bad situations if a matter of adultery is figured in, if there were no life insurance policies, if there were several life insurance policies involved. Large estates really make for terrible situations if the loved ones left cannot agree.

However, none of the above matters for the deceased because everything ceases to exist. The deceased normally doesn’t take loved ones with them, the spouse is left, the children are left, the job is left, the home and everything accomplished by the deceased individual. Of course, there are the individuals who decide to have Wills that designate who gets what; sometimes that’s good, sometimes it’s not, sometimes it is accepted, sometimes it is not......

DEATH IS FINAL

Can we learn from Life as we learn from Death? DEATH IS FINAL!

The first death to impact my life was my father. He died in 1971 when I was 10 years old; I was in fifth grade. It was such a shock to me, I really didn’t know him, I just knew he died. Upon his death, we got some financial security. I was a dependent child, therefore, eligible to receive Social Security because my father died. I don’t know what I thought about this man’s death because, to me, he was a father in name only. He didn’t live with us, lived in another state. I never really learned anything from him and so, I always wondered what it would have been like to have this guy around before he died. It struck me as odd that this guy never did anything for me in Life but upon his death, my life took a turn for the best.

I was able to get new clothing, I had some money and then there was a check for me every month. I could only assume that there was something between this guy and my mother because he never did anything to change the fact that she would get money upon his death. I only summarized that maybe their relationship was one where they couldn’t live together but did not hate each other.

I felt something akin to love for a man who died and then things changed for me. I was not glad that he died. I was glad that there was money to make my life a little bit easier. We were poor. There were times when we would not have food. So when he died, it made things a little bit easier for my family. My mother was able to buy herself a car, even though she couldn’t drive. She bought new furniture and a stereo. She bought an organ for our home. At that time, it didn’t matter to me what she bought as long as I could get me some new clothes out of the deal.

At some point, someone explained to me that because my father worked somewhere for a substantial period of time, I guess there was this income for his dependent family. Even though I was the only child in school at the time, my mother made sure most of her children benefited from that money somehow. Of course, I wanted to be selfish and keep all the money for myself. It didn’t work that way and because my father died, I again learned something. I learned that even though I was the dependent child in school, it was my mother’s decision on how the money would be spent. She decided how much she would give me, how much I could spend on new clothes, how much my sister would get, how much my brothers would get.

My mother wanted to share her good fortune with as many people as she could; she gave to my sister, my brothers. She allowed my aunts and their children to move in, she loaned money to her sisters. The biggest thing I learned at that time was that when you’re good, got a little something people are there. When you don’t have anymore, you don’t have anyone. When the funds ran out, all the people that benefited from the money my mother got were gone. They never one time said I could give you this or do that for you. It taught me, what’s mine I keep. DEATH IS FINAL!

The second person to die in my life was a friend from the neighborhood where my grandmother lived, his name was David. I think David was killed in 1972. David was such a nice guy but he was a hoodlum. He wasn’t mean or anything like that; he was just living too fast to be as young as he was. He smoked cigarettes and drank like the rest of us. He smoked weed too. David would shoot dice with the older guys in the neighborhood because he wanted to be like them I guess. David wanted to date one of my cousins. She liked him but I don’t know how much dating they did at such a young age. David may have been 15 years old when he was killed, I really don’t remember but I know it was a very young age. Everybody in the neighborhood was shocked when it happened. We couldn’t believe that he was killed by one of the older guys in the neighborhood. Everyone knew David and everyone knew the guy that killed him. I don’t really remember if this guy went to prison for David’s death or not.

I do know that we all missed David very much. I learned that one cannot live too fast. One cannot hang around guys that or 15 or 20 years older because they can be envious too. It was said that David was beating this guy in a crap game and the guy killed him. Like I said, I can’t say what happened because I wasn’t there. I can say that I learned that one must remain a kid as long as they can. We shouldn’t try to hang around with people older than we are, they don’t like it. I can remember hanging around with older girls in high school. I went to high school at age 13 so all the girls I hung out with were at least a year of two older than myself. Because I was able to hang out with these girls, I had access to smoking weed and some of them even took acid. Weed was as far as I could go, I was afraid at that time. My point, however, is sometimes we wouldn’t experience some things if we stood with individuals our own age. At least that is the way I looked at it when I was told that some full-grown man killed David. David didn’t deserve death at such a young age.

The third death that impacted my life was my grandmother who died in 1976. She was my teacher and I didn’t even know it. She taught me what one gained from being employed. She explained things to me that I didn’t understand. She protected me when there was no one else there for me. I learned so much from my grandmother until today, it’s scary for me because had she not been there, what would have happened to me? What I do know is when she died, things were totally different.

My grandmother taught me things that would help build a foundation for me so I could live. She made sure I understood that nothing in life is free. She made sure I understood that my mistakes are mine but I had choices. My grandmother did a lot of things by example. For instance, in her home she had a bedroom that she slept in and a bedroom that was a beautiful place to be but she didn’t sleep in it. From that I learned that some things are meant to be treasured, kept and not accessed by everyone.

When my grandmother died, she had beautiful linens and lingerie, towels, table cloths still with tags on them; never having been used. She had so many brand new items that she never got to use, nor where they designated for any member of the family.....From this I learned to utilize every hour of every day, I don’t have a lot of things that I’m not using. If it is not being used, I find a way to put it to good use; some things are donated to charity, some things are passed down but I’ve vowed to make good use of the things that God has allowed me to accomplish.

I’m not opposed to giving to individuals who are less fortunate as all the things my grandmother left, the individuals that got them were truly less fortunate than she. My grandmother definitely went to a better place than they were left in.

I can remember once poking fun at my grandmother, she dipped snuff and it hurt her that I did that. I was very young, 6 or 7 years old but the impact of my behavior stayed with me forever because of the impact it had on her. I loved my grandmother but was never able to apologize to her before she died. My grandmother was above holding a grudge against a child because she knew I didn’t know any better,