When we’re young, death feels like a distant stranger. We rarely think about it, and when we do, it often frightens us. It represents the unknown, the interruption of dreams still waiting to be lived, and the loss of everything we imagine our future will hold.
As we grow older, something begins to change. Death no longer feels so distant. It gradually becomes part of the landscape of our lives. We lose parents, friends, siblings, spouses, and neighbors. We attend more funerals than weddings. Many of us also find ourselves stepping into an entirely different role, not simply mourning those we love, but caring for them as they make their final journey.
There is no more powerful an introduction to mortality than serving as a caregiver.
- We help someone to dress when they can no longer do it themselves.
- We prepare meals, manage their medications.
- We sit quietly through long afternoons, and remain awake through anxious nights.
- We witness the gradual surrender of strength, independence, and sometimes memory itself.
- We become companions on one of life’s most sacred and difficult journeys, ushering someone we love from this world with tenderness, patience, and compassion.
After experiences like these, mortality is no longer abstract. It becomes part of our own story.
