I remember back in college there was a class by that name, I do not think that I took it, but I had enough close friends that did. I can remember being eighteen, my freshman year in school, trying to understand why anyone would even think of taking a class like that back then. To be honest, I can’t recall any of the topics, just the fact that it was tough to wrap your arms around the concept.

We fast forward forty-five years and the meaning is so much different. Today we have a plethora of information on the topic. We can search and find blog after blog, very well written, that describes the entire process. Yet, there is a reality that is so elusive and so very much emotional.

My dad passed in 2012. It was a slow process over months and months. His mind was as sharp as ever, his desire to live, the same. The problem my dad had was that his heart did not agree with the rest of his body and we watched him slowly slide away. When he left us, I saw a change in my mom, she stayed strong but it almost seemed like she was torn between this world and the one that my dad had gone too. The strongest woman I have ever known, she hung on through multiple strokes for another four years and left us in 2016.

We could discuss here the deep thoughts of the scholars that have studied the phenomenon for centuries, yet most of us only have a relationship with it in a merely superficial way. We do not study the subject, yet when the event takes place to someone close to us, we feel the emotion and that is all most of us will ever know or want to know. It hits so hard, the finality, empty space. I had a splendid relationship with both my mom and dad and I do miss their presence and I also know that I can close my eyes and share my most inner thoughts with both of them.

I discovered something new about death and dying lately, something that I had not felt before. My father-in-law is struggling in what will probably be his last days. He has gone from the hospital to hospice and now his family is discussing the subject of taking him home to be in his environment until the end. Watching my wife go through this is so much tougher for me than when I went through it with my parents. You want to help, but you cannot. You can console, hold, listen and that is about it. Especially for a young daughter who saw her dad as her knight in shining armor, it is hard. I do not think that there were many days in our 13 years together that she did not talk about her dad and now it is hard to watch her struggling to say good-bye.

So what I realized is that we can prepare, we can study and we can do everything the gurus tell us to do, yet in the end, it is the relationship that we had with the person that will lead our emotions. Make amends say you are sorry, do what you need to do in order to mend a broken fence and do it sooner than later. Because every day that you have with the ones that you love is as precious as can be, do not take a single moment for granted. when they are gone all you have is the visions saved in your memory bank. Sometimes even that is not enough.