[New post] A Woman’s Work: Till Death Do Us Part

Carolita Johnson posted: "Carolita Johnson | Longreads | October 2019 | 26 minutes (6,450 words)   Death is a process I knew very little about until my life partner began dying. He and I had to learn everything while we went through the process together. I say "learn," bu" New post on Longreads A Woman's Work: Till Death Do Us Part by Carolita Johnson Carolita Johnson | Longreads | October 2019 | 26 minutes (6,450 words)   Death is a process I knew very little about until my life partner began dying. He and I had to learn everything while we went through the process together. I say "learn," but at this point I'm not sure we learned anything. Sometimes I think Michael was the only one who learned anything real and true, as in Pete Townshend's words in "The Seeker": I won't get to get what I'm after, till the day I die. He died three years ago, and this is the first time I'm writing about it in retrospect. I took notes during it all — the before, the during, the after — and I'm glad I did because I sometimes barely recognize the hand of the person who wrote them, much less remember much of what I wrote about. If there's anything I've come to understand while reading these notes, it's that dying isn't just about the one person doing the dying. It's an undertaking woven by and around many people, and this has a certain beauty. In a couple, though, along with the unfathomable strengths it can prove, it also has the potential to expose deep, carefully camouflaged structural flaws in a relationship. It imposes financial considerations and logistical burdens, sometimes revealing unsuspected shabbiness; or worse, deliberate malice. For good or for bad, what a death unfurls in its wake will always surprise you. The deaths that I've known so far all began with aging and illness. So, I won't presume to understand death by any other cause, not by war, not by accident or any form of deliberate (first, second, or third party) intent. The deaths I've seen involve watching the body of someone I love get tired, begin to fall apart, stop working right, and finally begin to degrade, as they watch in helpless terror, into food for pathogens. Read more of this post Carolita Johnson | October 28, 2019 at 6:00 am | Tags: A Woman's Work, Carolita Johnson, death, dying, grief, illustrated essay, loss, Michael Crawford | Categories: Editor's Pick, Essays & Criticism, Featured, Nonfiction, Story | URL: https://wp.me/p4KhvY-yaR Like Unsubscribe to no longer receive posts from Longreads. Change your email settings at Manage Subscriptions. Trouble clicking? Copy and paste this URL into your browser: http://longreads.com/2019/10/28/a-womans-work-till-death-do-us-part/ Thanks for flying with WordPress.com