“When I was in my early 20s, my younger brother was killed in a car accident. He was only 19. His death was a huge shock to me — I hadn't really thought about death at all until he died,” said Bella Dawson*, a Mission Hospice and Home Care volunteer and former psychologist.

The losses that Dawson experienced and grieved have shaped her perspective on life and death. Although her stance on the two intertwined words is constantly evolving, Dawson believes that, if she had not grieved and lost people in her life, her perspective would be drastically different.

“I’ve moved away from that idea of sitting in a rocking chair watching my grandkids on the porch and actually started to focus on the here and now. Death is a very real possibility. Sometimes I'll think about if I'm lucky enough to live another 10 years, are there things that I would regret not doing with my life?” Dawson said.

Dawson was introduced to the realities of losing someone close to her when her younger brother died. As she processed that loss, Dawson’s other brother passed when he was in his early 40s. Dawson described his death as incomprehensible; he had gone to bed perfectly healthy one night, and the next morning, he had passed away.

“Even though the death of my younger brother was an absolute shock, the gravity of it didn’t really hit me at first. I thought, ‘Well, statistically speaking, we've had our bad luck.’ When my other brother died, that showed me that there is no measure of fairness in terms of what you have to bear and lose in life,” Dawson said.

Throughout her life, Dawson has experienced many losses. After losing both of her brothers, she found out that her brother-in-law passed away after committing suicide. Shocked by this news, Dawson again found herself deeply entrenched in grief. Many years later, her grandmother passed away at the age of 102; Dawson remembers her grandmother’s death as peaceful, with her family gathered around her bedside, holding her hand and talking.

“I’ve had a very mixed experience with loss. In some ways, each death served as a reminder of our own impermanence. They showed me the importance of questions like, ‘What do you want to leave behind? How do you want to be remembered?’” Dawson said.

*This source’s name is changed to protect them from legal harm. For more information on Carlmont Media’s anonymous sourcing, check out Scot Scoop’s Anonymous Sourcing Policy.

Song Fan, a software engineer in the Bay Area, recently lost a close friend to breast cancer. Before her friend passed, Fan had never experienced the loss of a loved one. Her friend’s death prompted Fan to change many of her lifestyle habits and beliefs.

“Prior to losing my friend, I was extremely career-focused. I was easily annoyed by tiny things, and I never thought about what I wanted in my life. Thoughts like how many more days I have on earth never came to mind. But seeing my friend, who lost all her dreams in a matter of months, really made me rethink what I was doing with my life,” Fan said.

As many people who have lost loved ones will attest, death often puts life into perspective. It teaches people more about themselves and their values, especially as they grieve the ones they’ve lost. Fan, for instance, found that distraction and communication helped her the most as she grieved her friend.

“After my friend died, I busied myself with helping organize her funeral, talking to her family, and really trying to be there for everyone, but there were a lot of things going on in my head. Talking about my feelings definitely helped clear my mind and helped me process my emotions,” Fan said.

As time passed, Fan found more ways to keep her friend in her memory. She started to journal her feelings and honored her friend by continuing to do activities they used to do together.

“I used to do yoga with my friend before she passed. After she died, I was looking for something I could do to keep her memory alive. I realized I could keep doing yoga, and every time I did yoga, I would think of her. Yoga became a tribute that I pay to my friend,” Fan said.

Samuel Volk is currently a senior at Stanford University looking to enter the medical field in the future. He has lost people in many different ways and believes that his experiences with grief will help him be a more empathetic and sensitive person.

Volk’s first loss was unexpected, but his second was gradual, eliciting a new form of grief.

“My grandmother had long-term dementia, so for years, I felt like we were preparing for her death. When she passed, the grief was very different because it felt like we had already been grieving before her death. It was almost like an anticipatory grief,” Volk said.

As his grandmother’s health continued to decline, Volk remembered his family coming together to support her. Together, Volk and his family would gather around his grandmother and do activities together.

“One of the things that we did at the end of her life was try to find ways to create joy for her. We knew that she loved playing cards so, every night, we would create card games with her. I thought it was unique and something that could only come from really understanding what she valued and what she loved,” Volk said.

Losing his loved ones also prompted Volk to reflect on his life and reconsider his values. Despite being a busy student in his final year of college, Volk has a broader outlook on life because of his losses — he knows to remind himself to place less emphasis on small things, like grades and school and remembers to appreciate his life for what it is.

“These deaths have really shown me how we're such fragile beings. It's just unbelievable how little consciousness we have of our fragility — we get so swept up by other things. Having awareness of our humanity helps us cut out what is unimportant and express ourselves more freely,” Volk said.

“My life as I knew it was over. Whatever hopes and dreams for the future I had were gone because my wife was supposed to be there for all our goals,” said Aurko Roy.

Roy, a research scientist at Google, had lost his wife to breast cancer when she was 30 years old. When she was first diagnosed, Roy described how they tried all the treatments, surgeries, and medications possible, and at first, she started to get better. However, right when he thought things were looking up, his wife’s cancer came back, and she received a terminal diagnosis soon after.

“We kept trying because she was so young and she wanted to fight, so we continued all the treatments, but the doctors told us that even with chemotherapy and radiation, she only had a year. One year to live. This was the death sentence that was given to us. There's no bargaining with death,” Roy said.

Roy’s anguish after his wife’s passing spurred a significant transformation in himself. A firm atheist all his life, Roy believes that his wife’s death has turned him into a much more spiritual and open-minded person. 

“Since we were in Silicon Valley, I was always delaying gratification and enjoyment. I would think that I could enjoy all the small things in life once I retire; once I have made enough money. It sounds cliche, but her death showed me how important it is to try and live every day as if it could be your last, to enjoy this experience called life,” Roy said.

Moreover, Roy’s perspective on death also changed after losing his wife.

“Death was an abstract notion for me before my wife passed. I know we all die, but it seemed very far away for me, so I hadn't given it much thought. But now, I think that death isn't to be feared. It’s actually nice, because eventually, we’ll grow tired of this world, and you’ll just want to close your eyes and go to sleep and rest,” Roy said.

A social entrepreneur coach with her own practice, Grace Garey had her first experience with death when her father passed away from sickness. 

“In those couple of months when he was sick, something just switched in him. He started to request and accept help in this earnest, vulnerable way. One day, I was with him in the hospital and he couldn't keep his food down. He was feeling nauseous and needed my help lifting him up, so I did, and he just looked up at me, no embarrassment, and said ‘Thank you,’” Garey said.

Garey remembers her father as someone who was strong and independent. According to Garey, her father built houses for a living and had a habit of keeping medical information about himself secret because he wanted to be viewed as infallible.

Garey was in the room when her father died, and she describes that moment as one that permanently altered her beliefs.

“I never thought deeply about life and death before my dad’s death. I don't have any structured religious beliefs, so I didn't have an idea of where you go after you die. I really did experience a shift in energy in the room when my dad died, though. It’s hard to describe, but it felt like there was a spirit there, and then it wasn't there anymore in his body when he passed,” she said.

After her father passed away, Garey was left to sort out the various emotions she was feeling. As time passed and the grief grew more tolerable, Garey began to feel the presence of her father in her life.

“What’s helped me heal is this sense of appreciation that there's a part of him that lives on inside me. I feel like we're still living life together in some way, even though he's not here anymore,” she said.

“As you get older, you’re not walking up the hill anymore; you're going downhill. You're going down the hill, and you start to look at things like paperwork, finances, inheritance, those types of things,” said Ann Ford.

Ford, an 84-year-old retired woman, has changed her view on death multiple times throughout her life. Reflecting on her life, Ford realizes how much her thoughts on dying have changed.

“My mother’s death, which happened over two decades ago, was so difficult because I didn't think that she should’ve died. I thought the hospital should have done extraordinary things to keep her alive. Now, at my age, I’ve realized that I don't want extraordinary things done to me. I've had a wonderful life, but once I reach the end, I don't want to be intubated or have drastic things done to me,” Ford said.

Ford’s end-of-life wishes touch upon a “rescue fantasy” that every patient should try every possible treatment to prolong their life, even if the patient has a terminal diagnosis. While some people may choose this option, others, like Ford, do not.

Ford has lost numerous close friends and family, and these deaths have had a profound effect on her.

“My most recent loss was the passing of my husband a year and a half ago. I had been taking care of him for a couple of years as he declined, and I had the blessing of being with him when he died. How I deal with my grief has changed a lot throughout my life. Now that I’m retired, I have this huge void of time. I’m trying to make my life a little bit more busy to cope,” she said.

One of the ways Ford busies herself is by volunteering at a local elementary school in San Mateo. She also believes that taking frequent walks with friends helps her grieve the people she lost. Aside from these activities, she has started talking more with her family about her own passing.

“I’ve started thinking a lot about my funeral. I want my family to know that I don't mind talking about it at all. I’ve been straightforward with what kind of funeral I want. I told them what type of music and liturgy I wanted, and also that I wanted them to have a party after. I want people to remember me that way,” Ford said.

“Part of the process of getting older is having a higher body count in your life. I've lost people who are important to me in every possible way — suicide, homicide, drug overdoses, disease, old age, and every other possible way that you can imagine,” said Erik Migdail, an English teacher at Carlmont High School.

In addition to teaching at Carlmont, Migdail is also a board member at the Congregation Sheath Israel synagogue and its associated cemetery. The first time he was exposed to the concept of death was when his great-grandmother passed away.

“I remember very vividly my mother receiving a phone call that her grandmother had passed away, and I just remember her crying. That was the first time that I became aware of death and its connection to grief, and since then, I've come to understand that death is very much a part of life,” Migdail said.

A couple of years ago, Migdail’s mother passed away as well.

“Losing my mother was particularly hard because it was such a foundational relationship. One of the members in my synagogue said to me, ‘You’ll think of your mom every day of your life, no matter how much time goes by.’ I’ve learned how true this is over the years: loss becomes less acute, but never becomes less profound,” Migdail said.

However, according to Migdail, one of the most impactful points in his life was when he almost lost his son to a chronic disease. While his son was in the hospital, Migdail recounts his belief that his son was too weak to survive a surgery he was about to undergo.

“My son did survive though, and the doctors told us we got very lucky. But to spend two hours with the recognition that a child of yours is probably not going to live through the afternoon forced a significant reevaluation of my priorities in life,” Migdail said.