Going to Europe

How do two people who love each other and want to grow old together talk about dying? If you talk about dying it’s as if one or the other has given up. Like, the very conversation itself has some mystical power of bring death just by saying it. Denial is an advocate of this and our minds use it to protect ourselves from saying anything about dying. But let’s face it, some things need to be said.

Carol’s mother died tragically in an automobile accident in 1999. I remember going through the grieving process with her. How she healed from that is a blueprint that I try to follow today. One of Carol’s family members had a hard time with the death of Carol’s mother. The family member decided that they were simply going to think Carol’s mother was on vacation in Europe. This gave birth to the ‘code’ word that Carol and I used to talk about her death, Going to Europe.

We would laugh out load ever time we would start out by saying, “When (I)(you) go to Europe…” I can’t tell you how important that was to me and her. I’ll share one conversation we had about Going to Europe. We were driving down Arrow on our way to the mall. She said, “You know when two people love each other very much and one is going to die? And that the one who is going to die tells the other that after they die they want them to meet someone and continue on with life? Well, that doesn’t apply to you. When I go to Europe I want 10 years of misery out of you.” We both started laughing.

We used Going to Europe to talk about the details of things. Our hopes and fears and wishes. I hope this helps someone out there who is living with someone who is ill. They need to talk about details, fears, or wishes but don’t know how to talk about it without sounding like they have given up. You don’t have to use our ‘code’ word. Make up your own. Once you do, you’ll be surprised how easy it is to start talking about it.