Life and death

You never know when the reaper calls you. Sometimes, it's a bit more obvious. When my father died, he just went to the hospital one weekend, and on Monday I heard about him passing away. When my brother died of lung cancer, it was less sudden. I had months of denial until I realised how deadly lung cancer is. Luckily, I had a chance to see him before it happened, to have the chats needed in the moments of lucidity while he was sedated with morphine.

Both of them didn't make it to 50, and appeared in my dreams afterwards. While I decided not to worry about my own death, the process of dying, potentially dragging on for months, doesn't sound pleasant at all. I was on the other of the globe while my mother lost her battle against cancer and chemotherapy, witnessing on the phone the turn from optimism to giving up.

Our society doesn't appreciate death, and sometimes just admitting that some of my relatives exited this existence made me feel like an outcast. I didn't really celebrated my 50th birthday much, although I cherished somehow staying for longer in this existence than two out of three of my closest male relatives. Average life expectation doesn't mean much, as millions of people make it up. Individual lives end at some point, below or above this average.

The first funeral I attended since decades brought my own strange relation to death back home, while at the same time aligning it more with my firm believe in reincarnation. We danced, and drank, and had a massive party, to celebrate the member in our midst who was gone. Yet I didn't yet dare to talk his immediate family how they coped with the hole ripped into their lives since then.

Today I found out that the best friend I had in Europe kicked the bucket. He contacted me less than half a year ago to notify me of his battle of cancer, and our last conversations were online. He also appeared in my dreams, but I missed the opportunity to hear his voice before it happened. He died just a day after I found out that my favourite niece was diagnosed with lung cancer.

My niece is in her mid thirties, and maybe the only person I witnessed from birth to adulthood. The last time in went back to Europe was mainly to say hello to her first daughter, as I knew that I wanted to stay in Australia for good. I vaguely remember seeing some bits and pieces I gave her before leaving Germany back then.

Call me old-fashioned, but I don't value "remote" communication, be it phone or social media, as much as face to face. Back when only landline phones were used, I knew how much one could fake it. I still felt compelled to phone my niece, and was surprised about the familiarity of her voice, and how connected I felt while hearing about her journey.

She sent me link to her instagram after our conversation, and that blew me away. She memed her fight against her cancer, which allowed me to see a recent photo. It took me some days to check her account (I'm over facebook, which owns instagram, and no longer much into "social" media). What I found, though, filled me with pride. When I left my home country, I gave her some things I didn't want to throw away.

Seeing these items being posted online, more than decade later than when I left them, made me sentimental. My mother inculcated the importance of family into me, so while my niece grew up, I always intended to influence her in a positive way. I gave her books and mixtapes, lend an ear to hear about her struggles and dreams, wanting to be the crazy uncle supporting her to become the best she wants to be, telling her wild stories her parents probably wouldn't have approved.

It breaks my heart seeing her fighting a potentially lethal cancer. Her artwork, like most visual art, offers an insight to her soul. I don't even know when she started drawing, but it looks like her art made it onto t-shirts and tote bags, and to prominent places in her home. As I love immediacy of interaction, I lost track about someone my heart is connected to. Yet losing someone until the next reincarnation takes more than I take at he moment.