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Dying THEN Death
The three year old was held over the coffin. The coffin held her maternal grandmother, a grandmother the little girl hardly knew,. The mother told the child to kiss the dead face and she did; she was a good girl.
Almost seventy years later, that is one of my first memories. I remember my grandmother’s body wearing her name brooch with “Ida Catherine” written in gold. Eventually I would learn that I was named after her and my paternal grandmother. Mary Lydia.
Luckily my parents picked Mary Catherine and not Ida Lydia for me. Even Luckier, my paternal grandmother nicknamed me “Mitzi.”
But I digress. Easy to do with this subject.
I read Kubler Ross’ iconic On Death and Dying when it was first published in 1969. I’ve always found the title backwards. As a RN I knew the correct order, I saw the dying first and then the death.
My next view of death (after that kiss as a three year old) was my paternal grandmother in her coffin in the small church in Purgittsville, West Virginia. This was the grandmother I knew. I was sixteen. There had been the old fashioned viewing in a relative’s living room and then a viewing at the church. Unfortunately the lid of the coffin was closed as the family watched and my little sister lost it and had to be taken out of the church.
