When I was in high school, my Grandpa on my dad’s side got sick. He was in his eighties then, in and out of the hospital often enough that part of me knew the end was near. But knowing and believing are two very different things. So when, in my sophomore year, Grandpa went into the hospital for surgery, my mom asked if I wanted to visit him beforehand. I said no, assuming he’d be back home in a few days. Same as always.
The day after surgery, his health turned. Before I even had the chance to regret my decision, he was gone.
At the funeral, I walked in next to my Grandma. As we turned the corner, saw him lying in the casket, she let out a sound that I first thought was laughter.
“This is a serious thing, Grandma,” I thought. “Canyou not laugh?”
Only then did I realize: she wasn’t laughing. She was wailing. For the first time in my life, I saw someone so overcome with grief that it swallowed the room whole.
Two years later, it was Grandma’s turn. Emphysema and lung cancer is what took her. This time, I knew the end was near, and I wasn’t going to make the same mistake.
But when I walked into her hospital room, I nearly turned back. Tubes everywhere. Her mouth wide open as she struggled for breath, even with the machines. I thought she was asleep, until she opened her eyes, saw me standing there, and smiled. Not just with her face, with her whole body, with whatever strength she had left. It was terrifying and it was beautiful at once. And I lost it. I told her I loved her and ran from the room.
She died two days later.
By my senior year, I had become the field commander for my high school marching band. This meant standing in front of the band, along with the entire Friday night football crowd, every halftime show. I was a nervous wreck each time. But Chris, a freshman saxophone player, had this little ritual with me. Right before we started, he’d catch my eye, make a goofy face, and I’d laugh. That laugh carried me through. It was small, but it meant everything.
One Friday night, while my friends and I were probably at our usual post-game blues-and-barbecue hangout, Chris went home and took his own life. We got the news days later, and I remember asking God if death was supposed to feel this way: so unreal, so impossible to believe.
Whether it comes with warning, like my grandparents, or without, like Chris, some part of me always refuses to accept it. Weeks passed before I really believed Grandpa wasn’t coming home. Even after watching Grandma gasping for breath, part of me thought she might still make it. And almost thirty years later, I still can’t quite believe Chris’s young life just ended on that Friday night.
It feels wrong. Like it isn’t supposed to be this way.
If you’re a person of faith, and I try to be one as often as possible, there’s scripture that says the same. Death wasn’t part of the original plan. But even the best-laid plans of mice and men go awry, as the poet Robert Burns once wrote. And here we are, forced to live in this unexpected unreality whether we want to or not.
Just last weekend, a friend of ours passed away. He was still a young man with a wife and kids. It was completely unexpected. I won’t share details because they’re not mine to share, but he was part of our lives and our kids’ lives for more than a decade. He was family in a way; not by blood, but by choice. The kind you build around yourself over years.
In Cat’s Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut calls these kinds of families a Karass. These are the people bound together to do God’s will in your life, often without ever realizing it themselves. Vonnegut was not a man of faith, at least not in the traditional sense. Yet what I’ve always admired about him (which is something I also admire in many of my friends who wear labels like atheist or agnostic.) is that he carried a deep love for people: a love that, to me, mirrors the very kind of love God calls us to have for one another. A Karass, as I see it, is the embodiment of that ideal. And the friend we lost was, in every sense, the embodiment of it too.
Walking into the house last night, my wife shook her head. “I can still hear his voice,” she said. “I still expect to see him next week.”
I knew exactly what she meant. Everyone in this chosen family, this Karass, said the same. Shock. Sadness. And that sense of unreality that always lingers after someone’s gone.
So what happens next?
When my Grandma died, the funeral stretched on, people we didn’t know drifting in and out, saying all the things people say. That’s when my friend Sean Hinken called.
“You want to go bowling?” he asked.
“Sure,” I said.
And we did. Brentwood Bowl, the place where I wasted too many hours as a kid. We bowled game after game. We didn’t talk about Grandma being “in a better place” or “free from suffering.” We didn’t talk about my parents or the future. We didn’t talk about anything. We just bowled. And somehow, that made it better.
In the Bible, Job is remembered for suffering. He loses everything: his wealth, his servants, his ten children. And, he is struck with a debilitating illness. His friends come to visit. Later, they’re rightly criticized for saying all the wrong things about God. But at first, before they opened their mouths, they did something right: they sat with him. No talking. No lecturing. No empty comfort. Just silence and presence. In Jewish tradition, it’s called sitting shiva. That’s what Sean did for me when Grandma died. He did it again when my mom passed years later. He’s good at it. Everyone needs friends like that.
The people in our Karass gathered last night and, for the most part, simply sat together. A few stories were told, a few memories shared, but mostly it was an unspoken agreement to carry the weight together. And in that quiet, shoulder to shoulder, perhaps take the first small, halting steps toward healing.
Maybe that’s the point. Death will always feel unreal, whether it comes like a slow dusk or a lightning strike. What makes it bearable isn’t explanations or scripture or platitudes. It’s the people who show up. The ones who sit with you. The ones who bowl with you when words won’t do. The ones who make you laugh when your chest feels like it’s collapsing.
We don’t get to choose death. But we do get to choose how we live with it: together.
That’s what my Grandma taught me with her last smile. What Chris taught me with his mischief. What Sean taught me with a bowling ball. And what our friend taught us just by being part of our Karass.
The loss never stops feeling unreal. But the love? That’s as real as it gets