Outside the Wake

On the way to a friend’s wake, a stranger’s sudden death reframes how the writer sees mortality — and his grandfather’s slow decline.

“What a privilege it is to live a life so full that your body simply can’t keep up with your spirit.”

I cut the conversation short with my cousin, whom I haven’t seen since I was about 10 years old. 

“I apologize, I wish I could stay longer but I have a wake to attend to.” 

Santiago, one of my childhood friends, was mourning his grandmother’s death. Mortality is a constant elephant in the room that your brain refuses to address, but in these moments, it’s inevitable. I ask myself, “Is there such a thing as a calm death?” 

Right as I am about to pull up to the venue, I see a dead body in the street. 

Poor guy must have been in a hurry and tried to cross the street only to get hit by a car, a small mistake but a permanent consequence. He looked young too. Such an anticlimactic way to end the journey of life. One impulsive decision cut it short, and because of that, his story ended right there… on asphalt. So much for the idea that life ends with a meaning, yet I stood there on my way to the wake, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d been handed an unnerving parable. The timing of it: outside a wake, a premature death, later walking into a room where another life is being mourned, it all felt unsettling in its symmetry. What a disturbing yet strangely poetic message God has sent me. 

I walked into the venue and gave my condolences. 

“I’m sorry about this, tía,” I say to her, not because we share a last name but because life taught me to call her that. “As crazy as it sounds, even death is beautiful in its own way.” 

She’s not related to me, but where I come from, when a lady lets you stay over at her house since the age of four and takes you out to birthday dinners when your parents aren’t able to make it, she becomes your auntie. 

I meant every word I said. Especially after what I had encountered, it came from the purest and most honest corner of my soul. What a privilege it is to live a life so full that your body simply can’t keep up with your spirit. She expressed her calmness with the matter to me.

Tía Eileen’s mother had been facing cognitive decline for many years now, and her passing had been anticipated long before. The emotional pain is innate, but it was kind of her to hold on to life and give us a few more years than we expected. It feels strange to admit, but entering that wake was a breath of fresh air. No one was crying or miserable; people were reconnecting and the sense of community felt strong. Even Tía Eileen was sad, though in the most tranquil and satisfied way imaginable. 

I couldn’t help but constantly think of that man on the street throughout the event, it completely shifted my point of view. We hold an unrealistic sense of immortality, and it’s very easy to look at that situation and say, “That wouldn’t happen to me.” But most of us have stepped into the street when we thought the road was empty and it was safe, only some don’t get the chance to step back. 

Similar to Tía Eileen’s mother, my own grandfather has been battling Parkinson’s for several years now, and up until that day, I only had a cynical perspective in regards to it, carried by a fear of losing bodily autonomy and the slow erosion of the mind. After that night I began to see it differently, not only as a tragedy but as what happens when the spirit endures longer than the body built to carry it.