I listened to a disturbing and compelling story this morning on the radio, that described La Crosse, Wisconsin as "The Town Where Everyone Talks About Death".
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/03/05/286126451/living-wills-are-the-talk-of-the-town-in-la-crosse-wis
It dawned on me, as I listened, that it may not be the town of Duck that is all that special to me. What it might be is what I'm doing here. That is building an immediate family, and creating a space for our extended family. So this story was relevant in the sense that my parents will retire in close proximity to me, and we've skirted these issues in conversation. But more to the point, the most illuminating moment in the piece involved the description and recording of a nurse doing a home visit and consultation with an older couple. The husband had terminal cancer, and seemed to accept his reality. The wife was struggling to accept the situation and it dawned on me that I probably would too. The husband had cancer, and in that sense a job--to go gracefully, die with dignity, however you'd like to phrase it.
The wife was well, but she was sad. As my immediate family grows and strengthens and our extended family is drawn closer, I realize we are creating a life together--all of us--not just the typical nuclear American family, but some hybrid. And the more team members we add, the more we expose ourselves to the fact that the loss of them will not be abstract. The passing of a grandparent will be the passing of a neighbor and the passing of a community member--someone we see every day.
Perhaps I'm finding the community in which I reside so interesting because it is the back drop for the micro community that we are building. We've all decided that this will be a beautiful place to live, and most of us, though we've not verbalized it, feel like it will be a beautiful place to die. And in fifty years if my daughter comes home to visit me on my porch, Lord willing, it will be the porch we cried on when her great grandmother passed, and her grandparents after that.
What's more, as we live here together we create an environment in which the passing of one will feel to all of us, in varying degrees, like the passing of that woman's husband in the story. It is his to die, and hers to grieve and wonder what to do. As any one's time comes to our family, there will be community at a loss for what to feel or think. That to me is terrifying, and only assuaged by the sense of joy and contentment I feel when we are all together here.
