And when I Die... 02052024

 

I'm not scared of dying

And I don't really care

If it's peace you find in dying

Well, then let the time be near

• Blood, Sweat, and Tears 1977

Death was never far away as a child. Not like in a “It is the plague, bring out your dead” kind of way, just that it was there. I remember older relatives dying, and then in later years it was just something that happened. I remember feeling kind of ambivalent about it, but I could not have explained it back then. I am still ambivalent, but I now know why.

I have my reasons, but you do not want to hear them. 

Dad died first. He had gone in for a serious, but routine surgery and his body had just had enough. The surgical team tried for hours and nothing they tried could save him. I think mom knew when they went in for the surgery, but did not say anything. I can still remember the look on her face as she talked with him just prior to his funeral services. She expressed so much love and compassion for him. Dad did not care what happened to him after he died, but mom had a fear of being buried alive. They had already discussed things, and she expressed her desire to be cremated. As dad did not have a preference, he was cremated after he died.

We joked with mom that after she was cremated, we would combine their ashes and place them in shaker bottles and give each of us kids one with their ashes so that whenever we were cooking one of their recipes, we could shake a little bit of them in the food in remembrance. It was a little morbid, but mom laughed out loud with the humor of it.

My sister Sam died next. It was a brutal death, a homicide. She did not deserve to die the way she did. She was always so caring and giving, and ultimately that is what brought about her death. Sam died on the anniversary of dad’s death, and I always wondered about the significance of that. I believe he was there for her to help her across. Sam, too, was cremated. I do not know whether she had any great desires for what happened to her after she died. 

My sister Chris died after many, many years of alcohol and drug abuse. The consumption of all that alcohol caught up with her and her body just started shutting down. She had problems with her heart, her liver, and her kidneys. She was another one that really was very creative and caring, as long as she was not under the influence of alcohol. Chris was also cremated, and I wonder whether she was following Sam’s example, or if it was representative of the transient life she had led. 

Mom died in 2009. She was just weeks away from her 81st birthday. Mom had lived with an aortic aneurysm for a long time. And then she died from it. It was a sudden death, as deaths go, but she still fought it in the end. Mom had always been told that if/when the aneurysm ruptured, she would feel a warm rush in her chest and would be dead within minutes. She managed to survive for the ambulance ride to the helipad for the air ambulance which transported her to the hospital. There were attempts at surgery to try and save her, and she still did not die for a few days, but in the end, she succumbed. 

I have other distant family who have passed that I am unaware of what their choices were for their final rest, and still others who are living, but none of them like me enough to share their preferences either. They have closer family ties than me. They do not owe me. Truth be told, I doubt that they ever even think of me.

I guess I might be next here. I am not planning on it any time soon, but then again, none of the rest of my family was either. Between the car crashes and motorcycle accidents and various close calls, I am sometimes surprised that I am still alive. Maybe God has just forgotten about me and left me behind.

I believe I take after dad with my desires in that I do not care what happens to me after I die. I am partly driven by my wallet in that I do not want the expensive and expansive coffin and services. Save your money. I do not even want to be embalmed, but that feeling stems from the years that I have had to put so many chemicals in my body to stay alive. I joke (only partly) that I think I will make my own coffin out of plywood, nicely enough finished, to save the cost of a coffin. I do not care whether, or even if, I am buried. In actuality, I would love nothing more than to be left on a mountain, in my mountains, under a tree, and left to go back to the earth. My body will be empty of me, but the thought of being able to watch mountain sunrises for eternity brings me peace.

Grant Lewis Collett October 6, 1963

Sixty years ago, on the night of October 6, 1963, my father Grant L. Collett was working as a Conservation Officer for the Utah Fish and Game as it was called at that time. He and his partner, James Hammer, were working in the Clarkston/Cache Junction area looking for a poacher that was taking game in that area. They had been working with other law enforcement officers, but were heading home at the end of the night.

Dad and Jim were southbound when a northbound car struck dad's truck nearly head-on, deflected off into a stubble field and burst into flames. The impact killed the driver of the car, while the passenger managed to crawl free from the burning car. Passersby stopped and were attempting to put the flames out with dirt from the field. Jim had a bruise from the seatbelt and a small laceration on his chin. The two-way radio in the truck was still working and Jim called out for help. Logan and Cache County fire units responded, as well as Cache County Sheriff's Office and the Utah Highway Patrol. 

When the car struck the truck dad was driving, the impact forced the metal dashboard to fold into the cab, crushing dad's right leg above the knee. The engine of the truck was pushed into the cab which forced dad's left femur out through his pelvis and fracturing his hip. It also rolled the firewall into the cab, trapping dad's left ankle. Rescuers had to use a pry bar (seen leaning against the truck below) to get the door off of the truck to get him out, and they broke his ankle pulling him from the wreckage. (The round object in the center of the grill on the car is the metal Fish & Game door placard that was embedded in the grill from the door of the truck where dad was sitting.)

One of the officers responding from Logan had the wherewithal to stop at the hospital. He knew that one of the doctors working there that night had just returned to Logan from a stint in an Army MASH unit in Viet Nam, and took him to the crash site. He performed trauma first aid on dad during the trip in the ambulance.

Mom had gotten a phone call stating simply "Grant has been in an accident and she needed to come to the emergency department. She was sitting in the waiting area when she heard the siren of the approaching ambulance, and watched as dad was wheeled in on the gurney with the doctor sitting on him doing chest compressions and yelling "Someone get me an OR, I have already lost him seven times and I don't know if I can get him back if he dies again!"

That was mom's introduction to how serious things were.

Two days later, dad was transported by ambulance from the Logan hospital to Cottonwood Hospital in Murray, Utah. They wanted to fly him down, but this was pre-helicopter times and the concern was since he was in such bad shape, if things got bad in the plane, they would not be able to get him to a hospital in time. The doctors at Cottonwood Hospital got dad stabilized, and once he was strong enough, they amputated his right leg just above the knee and inserted a replacement hip on his left side, placing steel plates to hold his pelvis back together. His ankle was in a cast, and the kindest thing they could do for him was to alleviate his pain. Since they initially did not think he was going to survive, they kept him sedated with morphine, ultimately getting him addicted to the painkiller. Dad later made a comment that getting off the morphine was worse than the pain he felt from the crash.

Dad suffered pain from the accident for the remainder of his life. He felt phantom pain in his non-existing right leg. His left ankle bothered him, and he was plagued with arthritis in his hips that resulted in requiring a second hip replacement. He also suffered other health issues resulting from the crash, including cardiovascular issues, and during one of his many surgeries for this, he died in surgery.

I often wonder what his life would have been like had this crash not happened to him. I wonder how I would have been different. As a young child when all this happened, our relationship was not what one would consider "typical." 

You'll be in my heart

You'll be in my heart from this day on. Now, and forever more.

I got home form work tonight after a long day. All of them are long anymore. As I walked into the bedroom to change my clothes I saw you out of the corner of my eye and my heart all but stopped. The joy was instantaneous and amazing. I started to reach for you and realized that it wasn't you. That it won't ever be you again in this life.

The last time I held you was when you took your last breath. I felt your body go limp and your life leave as I held you in my arms. I cried out your name.

I couldn't help myself.

You lifted your face and looked at me as if to say "It's alright, everything is alright." Then you were gone.

I knew you were "alright". But my grief was, and is still to this day, a tangible, bitter thing. I loved you with all my heart. No, I love you with all my heart. Tears come easily when I think of you, and life, my life, goes on. But there is a huge hole within me and there is pain.

Pain isn't new to me, and I've been told that it's transient, that you can't really remember how much something hurts. Rather you remember that something hurt. And yet, when I am reminded of you, the pain comes flooding and tearing back. It's amazing how the grief and the pain rip apart any defenses I've managed to build. The memories are as sharp as taking off a fresh layer of skin. Not necessarily enough to bleed, but all the nerves are fresh and quickened, exposed and brilliant with feeling.

Some day we will be together again. You and me and others who have passed too soon. When that time comes, I know that there will be tears. I know that the joy will be as heart-rending as the pain I feel now. What a joyous reunion. And some days it can't come too soon.

For tonight, I will say that I love you as much as ever, that I miss you and will start once again to seek relief from the grief and pain I feel. 

Know this Isabelle, Isa, know that you are, and always will be, in my heart.