I lost my friend Jeanie this month, and I need to thank her for helping me become an adult in the way that I think about and emotionally deal with death. I have been reading, and writing, and talking about this, and have come to some new personal realizations about it.

When I have to talk about people I have lost, I usually end up crying. Telling people that someone has passed away is one of the hardest tings in the world to do. I don’t know how anyone gets through speaking at a memorial service. I only had three lines of a poem to read at my grandma's burial, yet I dissolved in a puddle during the first line. I just had to remind myself that it's probably better to authentically experience emotions then to bottle them up, even for the sake of words...as my dad says, I’m the family crier—every family needs one, and at least I’m consistent.

I don't think anyone is ever ready for a memorial service. We live in a culture that is not very comfortable with public displays of grief, though they are important and very healing. That makes the anticipation of such an event hard, I think.

So American, really--have the ritual, yet deny it at the same time. I find myself bemused by the pilgrims visiting the pope's tomb, my first ingrained cultural response being to wonder why it matters so much to them. And then I stop, and ask myself what I really feel about it, and I realize that the reaction that is really mine, and not my culture’s, is that in my heart of hearts I admire them. I relate, not to a feeling of personal sadness or loss about the Pope, but to a feeling of grief for a person that mattered greatly in their lives. I also respect them for expressing their grief publicly. I wish we did that more comfortably in America. But, as with many things I believe strongly in, like respect for diversity, civil rights, treating people kindly, not driving like a jerk, etc., you have to make conscious choices about those things and live your life in a way that enacts them. You can’t expect someone else to do it for you, or even serve as an example to you. Indeed, our own president doesn’t share my views about how society should work, so I have to work within legal limits to affect positive change in my home and my community, and hope that others will join me. So, with grief, I guess all you can do is let it out with your friends and hope to grow as a group of people.

I have been really amazed with the level of closeness I’ve achieved with my and Jeanie’s other friends. It’s brought us to conversational places and moments of shared emotion that we’ve never had before.

Because I believe that the afterlife is actually better than what we have on Earth, and that what we grieve is not getting to be with the person anymore, not that person’s death itself (because they have gone to a better place), I believe that we must go on a journey of healing that ultimately makes us different than we ever were before. One must grow immensely from death.

I read this fantastic book about death and dying by two hospice workers. It has helped me clarify some of my beliefs about the afterlife and the process of dying. Most evidence suggests that terminal patients, who do not pass away suddenly, but have time to experience death as a process, not only see others they have lost as they are dying, but seem to be at peace as they pass on to the next form of existence. The great mystery is that we cannot know what that is, and that is OK with me. The positive thing is it seems to be sublime. That makes me feel better. I can believe now, with conviction and backing evidence, that there is a wonderful afterlife. No matter what happens, if I have that faith, I will be able to endure it. That’s what faith is, and I did not have that until I lost another person earlier this year, a teacher friend of mine who died in a tragic accident. My extreme reaction to that, while knowing of Jeanie’s illness, forced me to confront my immature attitudes regarding death. I had to really grow up. Being an adult means facing the saddest thing there is—the loss of a loved one. And it means facing it, experiencing it, being emotional about it, and growing from each of those experiences.

I always remind myself that memorial services are a ritual done for centuries as a part of healing. The service does not, to me, represent any kind of ending. The word "closure" means nothing to me. Because it never ends--you always have feelings about the person you've lost and about the loss itself--happy and sad feelings. And incorporating those into who you are and into your life are what helps us grow as humans. So I look at services as a way to bring meaning to a death, or a marriage, or a holiday--but also work to incorporate my feelings about those relationships/events into my everyday life.

Why is this so scary? Why do I feel dread about attending a memorial service? Well, fear of the unknown is certainly a natural emotional response for humans. Grieving is scary. I associate it with wearing black and speaking in hushed tones. But most people’s true emotional responses to death are far different than that. You still inhabit your life. Your job, all the people you know from different walks of life, the stores you shop at, the places you exercise—life and community are vast regions! So, I think it is possible to be debilitated by sadness immediately following a major loss, but after a while, you have moments of completely ordinary life experience. The hardest moments are the moments of true grief afterward—when you just can’t believe this loss has happened or what you or others will do without the person. Or sorrow for the person, him or herself, that they do not get to be there with you.

For death to have meaning, I think it has to, in our minds, be better than life. And dying people mostly seem OK to be moving on. So I believe it is better. Nobody’s ready to go—just like I wouldn’t up and move to France no matter how repressive the U.S. government got—but I think people reach a profound place of peace when it is happening. I’m trying to look at it as a normal part of the circle of life, and maybe that will make it less scary.