Well, it’s for a lot of things, actually. There were three reasons I ventured into an exploration of death and much to my surprise and AMAZEMENT, they all start with the letter A.
It was an ACCIDENT.
I was in my first semester of graduate school at Goucher College
A funeral home answered. I hung up. I checked the number. I called again. The same funeral home answered. And the rest is history.
Maybe it’s because I suffered through most of my life with ridiculous social anxiety that death and its natural aftermath, grief, seemed particularly scary. In the past, if your mother died, I would run from you. Not because I didn’t like or care for you, but because I didn’t know what to say or how to act and it made me feel incredibly uncomfortable. I learned that I’m not alone. Death is scary, but next to birth, it’s the most natural part of life.
At the beginning of this project, I was approaching 40, and I’d only lost a grandmother when I was a kid. I feared that the latter part of my life was going to be filled with death and sadness. Yes, both wait for me, but now I feel much better for facing my fear instead of pretending that the proverbial pink elephant doesn’t exist.
And it all lead to a BLOG and a BOOK, but more about that later…