Celebrating life.

This week I have been thinking a lot about death, and our discussion in class last week. My grandmother passed away on Friday. She was very sick for the past two weeks, but I did not think that her death would come so soon. This is the first time someone relatively close to me has died, and I’m still trying to understand what this change means. I say “relatively close” because she lived in El Salvador, and most of my memories of her are from when I was younger. As a child, my parents and I would visit her every other year, but as I got older it became harder to go so often. The last time I saw my grandmother was in 2008. It was the summer before college and all she would say to me was how proud she was of me for graduating from high school and going to college. I have found that the hardest thing for me to come to terms with right now is the fact that next time I go to El Salvador, she won’t be there and that I never got to say goodbye. Throughout the years she had collected photos of me, ranging from when I was a baby to my high school graduation picture. She asked to be buried with the pictures. While I am glad that she is no longer sick or in pain, I can’t help but feel sad that she’s not here.

I realize that this post doesn’t really have much to do with what we’ve been learning about in class, but I still wanted to share. I’m glad that this class has given me a greater perspective on death and how different cultures throughout the world celebrate someone’s life. While I was unable to attend my grandmother’s funeral in El Salvador, I have an idea in my mind of how it went. There was a long parade of sorts from the church to the cemetery, through the streets. The entire community was present. As people walked, they sang beautiful songs expressing their love and sadness. There were colorful flowers everywhere. And afterwards, there was a great deal of food involved.