#49 — Is It Okay to Need Them to Stay When They've Made Peace With Dying?
Our caller's belief about death starts with a question about brain injury: if someone survives a traumatic brain injury and comes out unable to remember who they used to be, wanting different things than they wanted before, are they still the same person? Our caller thinks so, just changed. It's the logic they've built their whole framework on, rooted in a basic law of physics: energy can't be created or destroyed. Whatever happens to the body, something happens to the rest.
Their partner has lived with a terminal illness since before they met, and had already lost two previous partners by the time this relationship started, one to a drunk driving accident, one to COVID. Their partner has a phrase they return to: grief and joy are sisters. Our caller didn't understand it at first. It took years, and other kinds of loss along the way, before it started to make sense.
Early in the relationship, our caller caught themselves hesitating before telling their partner they were upset about something, wondering for half a second if it was worth the friction. They decided almost immediately that it wasn't a real question. Treating someone more carefully just because they're dying isn't a relationship, they realized. It's something closer to caretaking, and neither of them wanted that.
They've also thought through what they want done with their own body after they die: wrapped in muslin, buried with flowers, allowed to become compost. They want to be in the room when their partner dies, and to help prepare the body afterward, if their partner is willing. They've watched pets die, sat with a grandmother taken off life support, even observed autopsies during a college internship. Their reasoning is simple: avoiding death doesn't protect anyone from it, it just means it's kicking your door in later.
Topics covered
10:51 — Traumatic brain injury and the belief that energy can't be created or destroyed
13:23 — Meeting a partner already living with a terminal diagnosis
28:28 — "Grief and joy are sisters," and two previous partners lost before this relationship began
34:00 — Refusing to let a terminal diagnosis change how conflict gets handled
46:48 — Planning a natural burial, and choosing to witness death firsthand
Related episodes
Anonymous #25 — How Do You Love Someone You Know You're Going to Lose?
Anonymous #46 — Can You Hope for an Afterlife That Was Your Partner's Worst Nightmare?
Book recommendations: Black Liturgies by Cole Arthur Riley and Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? by Caitlin Doughty — see the full list of Anonymous Book Recommendations here.
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