Yes, when you look into the face of death, it does change your outlook on life and what it's all about.
It was the summer of 1992 when I began my "awakening." My oldest sister and her husband came to visit from Arizona. The three of us were driving back from a visit to the Henry Ford Museum when my sister said she had something to tell me.
My first thought was, she and her third husband were getting a divorce. That was not the case. She told me that her and her husband were HIV positive.
The schock of her telling me this felt like I had been hit in the head with a hammer. In 1992, becoming HIV positive was like being given a death sentence.
She told me that she had been wanting to tell me for years. In fact when the family got together in Las Vegas the year prior it was her intentions to brake the news. Her husband was sick that weekend and she didn't have the strength to tell me then.
They had both been diagnosed in 1985, when my sister was in the hospital and extremely ill. The reason they hadn't told me sooner was in those days, you kept it a secret as there was great fear about the disease and it's contagiousness. They feared loosing their jobs, their insurance, their friends and their family.
When I returned home that afternoon I took a shower. I cried the whole time while showering. The next day, I told my sister about the crying. She said, "you've started the grieving process."
This was foreign to me. I had never grieved for someone who was still alive. What I was grieving was the loss of the future. That my sister and I would not grow old together. She would not be there when the time came to bury our parents. Everything I had experienced with her in the past, her children and my children playing together, celebrating Christmas and the Holidays with family, would not exist in the future.
The biggest challenge for me ws learning to let go of the things I could not change. As much as I wanted to fix my sister and find a cure for her illness, it was not within my power.
It felt as if it was all a bad dream and the emotional pain I felt inside made me feel lost and confused. My life as I knew it, had been turned upside down. And when things would eventually settle down, my life would be much different.
Facing your own death or the death of a close loved one is a very trying time. But it is also a time of great opportunity. My experiences with death of family members and friends and aquatences has taught me many of lifes lessons. For those who have passed before me, I will forever be greatful for what they shared with me.
