death in two roles

“Death is not extraordinary.”
A line from The Spoon Stealer by Lesley Crewe. A line which jumped out at me for obvious reasons, having lost my father on May 1. A line which feels wrong, at such a time.
Death is not extraordinary. Or, if we follow the rules of exam writing and remove the double negative:
Death is ordinary.
Which is, though I hate to admit it, true. Every single person will die, without exception; you can’t get much more ordinary than that. And yet death feels so extraordinary, whether we lose someone very close to us, or hear about it, or experience it clinically in our professions.

By definition, only a handful of people can be extraordinary. Is that status worthy of pursuit? All my life, I’ve thought it was, but maybe being quietly ordinary (that being most likely) is the preferred option. Isn’t it important to acknowledge all lives, not just the big in-your-face ones? Isn’t every death sad and difficult, even if there are unsaid words, even if there’s an element of relief or disbelief or frustration?
 
 It was much easier to experience death as a doctor than as a daughter. To be the person poking my head in the door or sitting on the edge of the bed for a few minutes, saying “Everything okay? Is the pain under control? Can I do something to make this better?” rather than the person sitting for hours listening to apnea spells, wondering, is this the last breath? Is it this one? Wondering if he suffered as he gasped, unconscious, sounding like a boiling kettle. Sharing stories with my mother and brother, laughing inappropriately as our family tends to do. Grappling with my imperfect, loving relationship with a father who was ordinary, perhaps, to everyone but us.

To be clear: deaths of my patients also affected me greatly, and affect many physicians like me, who write poetry and essays and stories about these experiences–check out the humanities section of any medical journal– but losing my father was different.
 
My body feels heavy, I feel emotionally flat, I have the hymn from his funeral playing on an endless loop in my head even though I haven’t been a churchgoer for decades. I can forget that he’s gone, yet the fact also lingers and hovers, a strange paradox. Time has been wavy and strange, like my chemotherapy treatment. The funeral was a week ago, which feels like months ago but also yesterday. I know all of this is normal, haven’t I counselled patients for years? I know I need to eat well and exercise and stop listening to sad music and watching TV as a means of escape. My life, that was on hold during 2025 and was just stretching and yawning back into being in 2026, now shakes itself at me and says It’s time, girl. Get out there, get back into it all. That's what Dad wants.
 
And I will, and maybe I’ll be more willing to accept the ordinary. To look long and hard at myself without excuses, to say yes, I messed that up, or I’ll do better next time. As I mentioned in my funeral elegy, my father once said “Just do your best. That’s all anyone can ask of you.” I should have listened much, much earlier, tempered my self-expectations. My ultimate death–hopefully a long way down the road–will not be extraordinary, except to a small group of those dear to me. It is those relationships I (we) must continually focus on, and nurture.