This Friday, March 14, my friend “Marilyn” would’ve turned 27. She won’t because she died by a combination of a suicide attempt and the medical errors following it just a few days before Christmas in 2022.
Just a few days before Christmas 2024, my father, Dr. J. Christian Wilson, died at almost 80. He’d lived a long, happy and successful life. He died of pulmonary fibrosis, which is always fatal, but long outlived his diagnosis and thrived until near the end of his life. He continued to enjoy cooking for my step-mother, spending time with his grandchildren and my brother and sister-in-law, teaching adult Sunday school at Duke Chapel and spending hours in prayer and study. A retired Biblical studies professor, he read a page of the Hebrew Bible in ancient Hebrew and a page of the New Testament in Greek every morning until shortly before he died.
While I wasn’t able to be physically with him when he died, my sister-in-law put me on the phone. He’d lost consciousness but his eyes did flutter and he moved his mouth when he heard my voice. For a few hours the family: my step-mother, his wife of 42 years, and her son, his wife and their children sat around his bed talking, sharing happy memories, with me chiming in on the phone. He died peacefully that afternoon.
His death was expected, but we thought we had more time. He was in hospice care in his home, and doing well. Still, I said everything I wanted to say. I spent a wonderful Thanksgiving with my father and step-mother. It was as close to what you could call a good death as possible.
Marilyn’s death wasn’t expected. I worked with her at an all-remote company, so we never met, though we talked a lot. I knew she was in distress: medication reactions, bad family situations, and she’d planned to spend Christmas alone, though at the last minute she accepted an invitation to visit cousins. She was devoted to her kittens and loved her job. She was strikingly beautiful, had been a college beach volleyball star, and was planning to get a Masters in Public Health. She was half my age when she died: 24.
After she died, I had no idea how to process the grief. I just cried and cried. I couldn’t get over it, no matter how many people told me to. She was so young and had so much promise. I kept wondering if there was something, anything I could’ve done.
When she died, I felt like I should live the life she should’ve had. I tortured myself thinking of what I should do, anything I could do, to make my life a living memorial to hers. And yet I couldn’t. No one can live someone else’s life for them.
By the time my father died, I’d made peace with the ways in which I might not have turned out as he’d hoped. I know he loved me, and helped me a through difficult times I faced as an adult. The impossible standard I had in my mind of what it would look like to be “perfect” was never attainable, at least not by an authentic version of me. My dad was conventional in a way that I’ll never be. I think he kept hoping that I’d turn out more normal, but he was proud of me for surviving and for the work I’ve done. And at the end of his life, we were joined by our love of Israel and support for the Jewish people. He was pleased that I had been writing against antisemitism and had made friends in Israel. He had a list of places he wanted me to visit when I finally get to the Holy Land.
I miss my dad, but I don’t owe it to him to live a life he might’ve imagined for me any more than I can bring Marilyn back by becoming what I think she might’ve become.
There’s no shortcut around grief, no timeline. I don’t think I’ve begun to process the loss of my dad. The urgency of day-to-day life, the difficulty of making a living, and fear about my aging mother take the place of active sadness much of the time. But there are moments. At a Zen retreat when we offered a portion of our meal to our teachers and parents. When I write an article that he would’ve liked, or when I want to tell him about what’s going on at the synagogue I’ve been attending. He used to love it when I would send him pictures of the flowers in my neighborhood in spring and summer. I believe he’s at peace, with G-d whom he loved and served all his life.