How We Let Death Become Life (Part 1)

Death. The word in and of itself is wrought with finality and doom. It is sometimes celebrated and most often feared. How each of us deals with death, in a way, says a lot about how we live. I have been fortunate in my life not to loose a close family member. Death is something that I take to heart, whether it is someone I know or it is an unknown name I read in the newspaper. Though I have not lost any close family members, I have lost a couple of friends. Death was a large part of my life during the spring of 1993 through the summer of 1994. During this time, I would learn that Brandon Lee died. Deal with the death of a co-worker. And finally, watch a friend courageously fight and loose a battle with cancer. All of these deaths have had an impact on me. They have left an indelible scar within my soul. A scar that I know will never heal, but instead, as I loose more friends and family, through the course of my life, will be replaced by other scars. The one lesson that I have learned is that we tend to let the death of someone overshadow their life. The circumstances and causes of the death become what the person was in life. That is so unfortunate. I worked with a guy who was full of life. He was a vibrant 28-year-old who was a walking Adonis. Coming from a mixed Italian and Hispanic background, he had long flowing black hair that most women would give their teeth to have. He was a brash, self-confident New Yorker who was living life to the fullest. My friend lived hard. He was far from an angel. But his death became his life. The mysterious circumstances surrounding his death over shadowed who he truly was. While others let the circumstances and images of his death become his life, I held on to a much simpler memory. He had lived in Arkansas close to four years. During that time he drove around town with expired New York license plates and an expired New York drivers license. Finally, one afternoon, he came boisterously into our office, as usual, but this time with a child like glee. He proudly reached into his wallet and produced his newly obtained Arkansas license. You would think he had just won the lottery. The image of his proud smile, holding that license up and doing a mock pose was burned into my memory. Two days later, my friend was dead. I remember his life, not his death. Now, I will spring forward to the summer of 1994. A close friend of my wife and I was stricken with breast cancer. She struggled for a year with the cancer. It consumed not only her breast, but also other parts of her body. She never complained or felt sorry for herself. She was going to beat this. She was going to live. Always a fighter, she was so overcome by the cancer that she would forget how to breath as the cancer progressed through her body. I remember one time when she had one of these attacks. She grabbed my wife's hand and pleaded with her to help her remember how to breathe. My wife took her hand and calmly worked with her until she was breathing again. The last time I saw our friend was when we were at her funeral. She looked nothing like the woman I knew. Afterwards, I could not shake the two lasting images I had of her, the struggle to breathe and the sight of her lifeless body in the casket. She was only 32. Finally, after searching through pictures one day, I ran across a photo that showed her smiling brightly and pulling together her two best friends, my wife and another lady. It dawned on me that this was the person I knew. The woman who had one of the brightest smiles I had ever seen. A woman who would put her arms around everyone and make them feel warmth and love. That was her life, not the images that I held on to. I was letting her death become her life. I bring up these personal stories because I feel Brandon too has become remembered more for his death than his life. In the next part of this article, I will go into detail about how he and I come from similar backgrounds and battled the same demons. And how his death taught me how to remember life.

Take care,

LLcruiz