Death is a Curious Thing: An Open Letter to Grandma

Isn't it curious that we spend decades in school, preparing us for life-transforming moments in our future, but when it comes to the purpose of life, to love, to explore joy, and to grieve, we are left surprised? Unprepared and maybe even shocked?

Isn't it curious how death can creep up on people sometimes slowly, other times all too quickly, and we are left without much of any speech?

I think so. Death is a curious thing.

And on March 21, 2016 at 11:00 AM my grandmother died peacefully.

Growing up, even until about a week ago when I witnessed my grandmother breathe her last; death had been my greatest fear. Perhaps I will still have my moments where the thought of spending my last day on this world will haunt me, but in those final moments with someone I cherished and loved so dearly, I have become healed in the complexity of death's promises in my unforeseen future.

Ruth Elizabeth Goff:

To many, a stubborn, whole-hearted, independent, crafty, relentlessly loving mother, sister, wife, grandmother, great-grandmother, friend, and colleague. But to me, Cookie Grandma has become more than any words will embody, any stories will encapsulate.

She has become the little voice in me urging to not give into fear. If there's a few things she wasn't, many would say: selfish, reliant, artificial, or weak. Rather, to me, if there's one thing she never was in my eyes, would be someone flirting with fear.

Death is a curious thing.

Death breathes life into a new image of someone or something, death breathes life into relationships with friends you have not met or family you desired to reunite with over the years, death breathes life through the final words of a loved one and the encouragement it brings, death breathes life onto hopes and desires and dreams that also were, but never became.

Death breathes life.

Grandma, your painless death has taught me to surrender to life.

Grandma, your painless death has taught me to be confident in courage.

Grandma, your painless death has taught me to give unceasingly.

Grandma, your painless death reminded me you are now watching me and I plan on holding you in my heart in all that I do, all that I say to people, all I desire to experience wherever that may be.

Grandma, you were a curious thing. Headstrong, brutally honest, unfathomably humble, and you sure as hell were witty.

In sifting through your belongings back in your house in Michigan, I came upon a poem I found from a friend of yours that must've passed away, it reads:

"The Gateway of Life"

"We say goodbye! but not forevermore;

The call but summons to yon farther shore.

And when we too embark,

It is not for the dark unknown seas,

but for the welcome meeting with loved ones gone before, who wait our greeting.

Living in Hope and Faith, we fear not Death; tis but the Gate of Life."

So too, in the faces I meet, the places I grow, the memories I capture, through the turmoil of the sadness and in the adoration of joy, and in my imperfect relationship with Our Lord whom you are held in the arms by right now, there too, do you await to greet me.