Perhaps I have always known death

 I don't remember a time when I didn't understand what death is.

Isn't that strange?  I'm sure there must have been a time when I didn't understand - after all, none of us are born with an understanding of the concept that we too must one day die.  Still, I can't remember when the moment was that such understanding came to me.  Nor do I remember any point in my life when death wasn't with me fully.

When I forgot to give my pet hamster water too many times and he died of dehydration, I knew fully the scope of what I had done to him.  I knew with certainty that my negligence was the cause of his demise, that I was entirely at fault and that he was thus gone forever.  I still feel guilty over it even over 30 years later.

When my grandmother gave me her ring and explained that she was doing it because she was going to die soon - I had no confusion over what the moment meant.  Nor did I believe for a second that she wasn't telling me the full truth.  I was in sixth grade and I had been living for years with the truth of what cancer does to even the strongest of women.  Death had been a looming shadow in our family for as long as I could remember, even then.

When I was three and my grandfather passed away, I remember a strange man kneeling in front of me to try and explain in a gentle and poetic way that he had "gone to a better place".  I remember thinking that this man who smelled too strongly of odd aftershave and moth balls was an idiot for thinking that what he was saying held any resemblance to the definition of death.  I also remember getting very angry at the people talking to the coffin because the thing in the box was no longer my Grandad and so they needed to stop talking to it as if it was.  I stared at the little gold butterfly on my black patent mary-jane winking in the sunlight to distract me from my anger.  I thought Grandad would have liked the game I made up in my head playing with the angle of my foot to best catch the light on the tricky butterfly shaped metal - but I knew I'd never be able to talk to him about it.

When I worked on the ranch and we slaughtered the sheep and the cow, I knew the next day where the meat came from and that the animals had lost their lives to end up on our plates.

When Grandma took me to that seemingly endless parade of Eastern Star funerals, I knew why all the people were in black and what the pomp and circumstance was all about.

I talk to my peers sometimes about when they first became aware of death and so many have spoken of a moment that they track in their lives where death became a reality for them.  For some, it was the death of a classroom pet, or coming across roadkill, or even the more traumatic death of a grandparent, but so many of them can remember an exact moment when the concept of death became fully realized in their lives.  How strange I think that moment must have been - it's nigh unfathomable for me.

Instead, I have memories of sitting on my grandmother's lap as she read to me about the funeral meats furnishing the wedding table of Hamlet's mother and uncle.  I remember talking with her about disrespectful it was of Gertrude to wait so little time before remarrying.  I even remember asking her how someone could get married before even having taken enough time to grieve fully, and asking if the grief wouldn't end up messing up the wedding and the marriage.  We used to talk about that sort of thing when we read Shakespeare together and Hamlet was always one of our favorites.  When I told her on her death bed that I was going to miss her so much that I didn't know how to say goodbye properly, she had me pull out the Shakespeare and we read the lyrics to Orpheus With His Lute together.  She told me to cry as much as I needed to, but then to stop my tears and pour my longing for her into my music - to let my violin cry for me.  She told me that I was allowed to grieve for her as long as I wanted, so long as I used that grief to make something beautiful.

So no, I don't remember a time when I didn't understand what death is.  More than that, it's hard for me to remember a time when I didn't have grief and longing pushing at me to make a violin cry, to turn the cold silence into a song, or to paint beautiful prose with the oil of letters.

Loss is a muse unparalleled.  When have I not known this?

There must have been a time..... mustn't there?  I can't remember.