They say it happens in Threes...

Its a myth in nursing homes... that it happens in threes. So if one resident passes away, the whole staff waits for the other two.
Maybe when we trivialize death, we think that it makes it a whole lot easier to cope with. In all actuality I think that it makes it that much harder. When we act like it doesn't phase us, I don't think we are actually doing anything for ourselves.
But forget about real death for a while... think about death of a dream, death of a relationship, death of a season in life...
What about those? Are we trivializing them too? Are we trying to bury them away in our subconscious where they won't hurt us, affect us, make us feel? And what exactly is it that we are so afraid of feeling in the first place? I wish I knew. I feel like maybe if I did I wouldn't feel so badly about all the deaths that I see/experience/feel around me or in me.
Sometimes I think its that I am too afraid to feel, lest I be vulnerable. Too afraid to hope, lest I be disappointed. Too afraid to afraid to love, lest I be get my heart broken.
But far back in my mind, I can recall those times when I wasn't afraid.
In fact I read about one of them just the other day... I was rereading one of my descriptions of life in my UG, and remembering the openness and lack of fear that I felt there. It probably, in all actuality, was just a special gift of grace for the moment, or as some would like to say, a change in mindset, and not something special about the place itself. And then I think of those times that I have stepped out and met people... people who are now my best friends in the world. And how such a little act of being open, and vulnerable has ushered in some of the most refreshing relationships!
And it doesn't help with the 'deaths', but it does help me go on 'living'... that knowledge that there is so much more to think, feel, experience, dream... that these deaths themselves are sometimes a pathway into life.
And I smile because I remember that even as my residents take their final breath... I see my fellow staff member saying goodbye... bent over with her pregnant belly in the way of that last hug...