It goes where it will, never resting, never needing sustenance except for the one thing it does to those left behind. Life is taken by Death; it is the one true constant in our world. Grieving souls feed its cruel appetite.

It loves the pain and after it takes away from us, we never forget that our time too will come.

I’ve written about death here, and it always hurts me. There is no value in keeping pain to oneself; doing so makes everything worse.

Yet letting it out has often led me to question the value it holds as well. Does anyone read, do they hear the words of the grief-stricken people left behind? Do the wails and sobs fall to deaf ears?

The true story is always going to end in tragedy. If we admit to being mortal, that is. Fictional heroes that never die are written about all the time and always have been. Those mighty men of old who did pass on always seemed to do it on their own terms, with courage and honor.

Literature does what it is intended to do; it distracts, entertains and allows us the occasional dream.

And if it is true that cheating Death is a staple of yarns old and new, I must point out that the opposite is also true. Death cannot, in the end, be avoided after all. We have long loved the sad tale too, the last words spoken, the final kiss, the closing of the eyes forever. To deny this is to deny our humanity. We love the comedic and the noble tale, but a good tragedy, yes, we open our arms and beg for them.

I can’t remember the grade I was in. Fourth or Fifth. An announcement over the PA system before the school secretary announced bus numbers assigned everyone at Bodkin Elementary to watch a made for TV film that night. We weren’t to be given marks on it, but the principal wanted us to watch it.

I didn’t know what I was in for. Brian’s Song was about the last two seasons of NFL football played by Brian Piccolo of the Chicago Bears. It was about his unlikely friendship with Gale Sayers, his roommate, who was African American. It was about their closeness and Piccolo’s diagnosis of cancer, the useless treatment that followed, and his death.

Although the main actors, James Caan and Billy Dee Williams, looked nothing like Piccolo and Sayers, the screenplay was well written and the entire cast knew what they were doing. The music and the acting combined to form a tear-jerker I’ve never been able to forget. I’d seen screen deaths before, but I cried my eyes dry that night. The saddest part was that I didn’t cry at all when real death struck a couple of years later. My paternal grandfather passed in 1976 from cancer. I wasn’t allowed to attend the funeral but even if I had, I may not have cried very much. Oh, I loved him. It just felt remote and he’d lived two states away. I’ll bet I could count the number of times we had visits on my fingers.

Over the years, Death crept closer. My grandmother was a harsh loss. I had adored her. Then I got married and had two children. Neither one lived to celebrate their 30th birthday. Death comes as it will, for whom it will. Angels and doctors cannot stop that.

COVID has given so many of us that harsh lesson. Death still stalks the world armed with it; vaccines and masks help, but the weapon remains deadly. How many have had to say their final farewell to an intubated loved one by a video connection? The meanest deaths accompanied by a cruel lingering vision the survivors are inflicted with.

Recently I’ve been as many people have been, out of the loop, unaware that certain parts of life had resumed, missing things that I’m either happy to have missed or very disappointed that I did.

I used to be a dedicated fan of the crime procedural NCIS, but when COVID hit, everything shut down. I wasn’t aware of the show going back into production.

I was aware of the story arc in which Tobias Fornell’s daughter had gotten into street drugs. This season, Emily died of an overdose. NCIS has never shied away from death. The team investigates death almost every week. Cast members have had their characters killed off since the end of season two. Sasha Alexander was first. Kate’s death is still complained about to this day. Mike Franks was killed by the Port-to-Port killer at the end of season eight. His ghost showed up a lot and even grew a beard, but that’s okay; the show had already jumped the Shark so many times that few people even noticed. Recurring characters get the worst of it, though. Director Jenny Shepherd was killed offscreen, opening the door for Leon Vance. But the recurring cast, sometimes their exits hurt us the most. The death of Fornell’s daughter Emily was occasioned by serious viewer outrage. They cried foul and called it unnecessary. Mainly because we had sort of watched Emily grow up and partly because earlier this season, ME Jimmy Palmer lost his wife Breena to COVID. Everyone loved Breena, beautiful, sentimental and strong, and during the continuing epidemic, we question why she had to go that way.

I’m glad I missed those episodes, but I know I eventually will have to see them. When Emily is found dead, Gibbs finds out by getting a phone call.

That is exactly how I learned of my son’s overdose and death: a bloody phone call.

That day, February 14, 2018, and the day my daughter was removed from life support, July 5, 2012 are the absolute worst days of my miserable life. Death had come for them and left behind something I don’t like when I look into a mirror. Not that I ever really liked myself much anyway. But since 2018, the mirror shows me the worst of humanity: a failure at everything, the worst of all being a parent. I was supposed to go way before them. They should be here. They should be here!

What’s left? What are we supposed to do now that those whom you and I loved so much are gone?

I’m glad that tragedy is dealt with in our culture, whether in literature, film, television or documentary. Without the tears we shed for others and ourselves, we would never be able to see, to learn, to grow stronger, to pass on what we know. As a species, we cope with loss the same way even if different religions and cultures have their boundaries and rules. We cry, we ache inside, we scream to the heavens that it isn’t fair, it isn’t right, and we demand to know what is the point of it all if Death steals away with our own children.

Death is a cruel transient, stalking, ever stalking. Seeking the weak and strong alike, and it makes no difference how good or bad a person is, or how old they are.

As I’ve been mentioning, I’m doing an epic playthrough of an epic game on the PS4: Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. It could be the greatest game ever made. I’m over 400 hours into it, which would make hardcore gamers laugh at me. Nobody takes that long to finish a game, right?

But the story is indeed epic and there are two DLCs to add to it. They’re worth it. I didn’t buy the game because I wanted it to be over in a few days. I knew it was deep and that I’d want to wring everything out of it that I could.

It deals at times with untimely death, which the ancient world knew better than we do. A child is killed early in the game, and it did get to me. There are definitely triggers in Odyssey, but right now my character is stuck in the Underworld, in Hades. It’s a horrible place, rendered so well that suggestion makes you catch yourself having trouble breathing, as if hot ashes were really getting into your lungs.

The worst thing is that you constantly hear babies crying. Not in hunger or pain; every parent learns that there’s a difference. And those can be soothed and the crying made to cease. These cries are of terror and torment. I could tell when my kids were babies if they cried out of fear. They might have had a bad dream. They may have been scared by sensing that they were alone. But you learn the sound, and hours of cuddling later, they’re fine. These cries get to me. They distract, they trigger memories, they fill me with hopeless pity. Who the hell recorded this?

I don’t believe babies get sent to Hades, or Hell. Never could I believe anything so cruel and unjust as that.

Death makes us all think about an afterlife whether we want to admit it or not. In the end it just leaves us with broken hearts. Pain enough to last until our time comes.

We can console and we can pity the survivors, and we always should.

Those I pity the most, however, are all those who refuse to or are incapable of love. They cannot feel the sting of a broken heart. The pangs of first love. The horror of their baby crying in the night but refusing the teat or bottle. To know something is wrong but to be helpless before that something.

It isn’t our intelligence that makes us human. Grief, fear, the emptiness of loss…those are proof that we have loved freely. That is what truly defines us.