According to Wikipedia Illness, sometimes referred to as ill-health or ailment, is a state of poor health. Illness is sometimes considered another word for disease. Others maintain that fine distinctions exist. Illness does not exist in my family. Unless you consider the cessation of life an illness. I am not referring to my great grandparents dying of old age, having lived long fulfilled lives with stories of a different time. I mean death according to Wikipedia: permanent termination of the biological functions that sustain a living being.
It started almost before I can remember. I was just 3 and my grandmother, my “meme,” had an issue with her diabetes and went in for a check. The technician did not read her chart fully and injected her with something she was deathly allergic to, which would not have been that big of a deal if meme did not have a DNR. Meme was gone in a blink of an eye. Her 5 children and 5 grandchildren at the time survived her. And all I can remember is how happy I was to play with my cousins while all of the family argued. At 4 I was slightly more cognoscente when my aunt Yvonne was in a car accident. Hit by a drunk driver, instantly taking the life of my uncle steve. My in-utero cousin sara did not make it either. Steve and sara were gone in the blink of an eye. My older cousin shawn burst his spleen and had massive internal bleed including an epidural bleed. My younger cousin bud broke both his legs and hips. This was the first time I felt fear in a hospital. Seeing the older boy plugged into machines, his screaming scared me. The tubes left nothing untouched and it felt invasive. I did not like it. At age 12, in a passing moment my uncle joe was hit by a drunk driver. He died instantly of a severed aorta, and if that was not enough, his trunk was engulfed in flames. Joe was gone in the blink of an eye. At 17, my 8-year-old cousin Joseph was riding in the car on his way home, when the car was hit by a man driving high on medication. Joseph was gone in a blink of an eye. Kinda. He was an empty vessel, the apparent loss of a soul but they called him a vegetable, “Like a carrot or more like broccoli?” I remember his baby brother Jeremy asking. My aunt was upset that they took too long to get to his final diagnosis, so she couldn’t have his heart donated. But she did donate all of his organs.
Death is a disease that runs in my family. Or maybe it’s just bad luck. At first, there is this numbing pain that overtakes all senses. Then there is the heart pain of grief. But it is quickly quieted by the void, the absence of one who was previously there. Death has become normal to me. Some think this is bizarre, sad, upsetting. I know every one of my family member’s post-life wishes, parts to be donated, where they want to rest, box or ash. My immediate family is the only segment that has not been directly touched. I cannot imagine losing a parent or a child. I have, however, definitely become overly sensitized to people’s word choices though: Accident, passed or passing of, vegetable, gone in a blink of an eye, sorry for your loss. Do any of these words actually encompass what happens? Of course not. But death is an illness that has defiantly changed me. Memories, people, the moments in which you are alive are of the utmost value to me. The people in my family that have died live on in memories, in stories, and are constantly with me in my life moments, and that is the best treatment plan for death.
