The God of Endings

Some call him the God of Endings, or the Conductor of Final Departures. Others simply call him by what follows in his wake: Death.

I have some passing acquaintance with the God of Endings in that he has visited my family a handful of times. Each time, he takes someone with him, and they are never seen again. But his methods are varied, with no ending coming about in precisely the same way.

Sometimes his visits are swift and unexpected, like a thief in the night: a tornado tearing through a house, a plane crash, a lone gunman, a severe illness, a train running someone over. (That last one, the train, is actually how one of my great-aunts left this world for the next, which could be funny if it wasn’t so tragic. I didn’t know her well, so her departure didn’t affect me much, beyond having the story to tell. I’m sure it affected others closer to her much more, but I do not have the words to tell their stories.)

My most formative encounter with the God of Endings came when he took my grandfather. The night after Christmas. A sudden heart attack. In my family’s bathroom.

I was seventeen. I knew that his soul was already gone from the moment I saw the body. But I was trained as a lifeguard. My mom and grandma were desperate to save him. So I performed CPR until EMS arrived. It didn’t save him. I knew it wouldn’t. Death had already come, and he had made his decision. The departure was final–as they always are.

Such visits are merciful in their quickness, but the challenge is finding closure. Picking up the pieces left behind when someone is shattered out of this life, leaving a human-shaped hole in their universe. The living carry on–what else can they do?--but it takes a long time to make the necessary repairs.

Other encounters with the God of Endings are more drawn out, the way Midwesterners end visits with family and friends. They begin with a terminal diagnosis or some other death sentence. The exact moment of departure is rarely specified. The doctors will offer a prognosis, but no one can be sure of the day or the hour.

So it was with one of my grandmothers. We knew from the moment of diagnosis (cancer, Stage 4B) that her days were numbered, but the God of Endings kept that number a secret. Grandma was embittered. This wasn’t how she wanted her departure to go. And to be fair, it was not an ending that anyone would choose for themselves, at least from my vantage point. Beyond the suffering intrinsic to the disease, there is a special kind of torture in knowing how the story ends but being unable to close the book or count the pages remaining.

As it turned out, she had between 60 and 90 days left–the exact number eludes me–at the time of diagnosis. Not much time, to be sure–but time enough to seek closure. To ask what she wanted to happen after she was gone. To repair rifts in relationships. This departure is no less difficult than the sudden kind, but it is less shattering. Those who will be left behind can prepare. There will still be a human-shaped hole in their universe, once the final breath is taken and the end has finally come, but they have time to reinforce the spaces around it, to ready themselves, to make peace with the departure. And so it was in this case. This illness provided a bridge to allow my mother and her mother to partially repair their estranged relationship. Mom took care of her until the very end.

Of course, there’s still the matter of watching a loved one suffer during that protracted ending. But nothing can help that. Death has his moments, his methods, and his reasons–and some are crueler than others.

The worst of all is when the mind goes before the body. Little pieces of a person are taken over time, bit by bit. At first it’s just forgetfulness and confusion. Then hallucinations. Hygiene suffers. They start hiding things, becoming untrustworthy. Extra care is needed; no one person can help the victim on their own. Eventually the victim stops being able to form complete sentences in conversation. The God of Endings collects the pieces of them over months and years, dragging it out. Perhaps he takes pleasure in it. There is certainly no pleasure for anyone else involved. I should know. This is how my other grandmother is leaving us–a little at a time over several years.

This ending hurts more than the others. Despite the interminable length of this departure, the drip-drip-drip of pieces of a person leaving, closure is difficult to find. In this death, more than any other, there is a special kind of torture in knowing how the story ends but having no way to fast forward, to walk out of the movie, or even to ease the suffering.

How we will move on from this, how we may or may not ever find closure, I have yet to determine. That ending has yet to be written. We have not yet reached the moment of the final departure, but we all can see the writing on the wall. And though the end has not yet come, our time of mourning has already begun.

Much as we would like to, the living cannot negotiate with the Conductor of Final Departures. There are no deviations from his schedule. And in the end, he will come for each and every one of us. Only he knows when and how.

How then shall we live, knowing that each time we see another person could be our last chance to do so? What things would we say to one another, keeping that thought in mind? How would we treat each other if we thought the impression we were making in any given moment could be the last impression we would make in this world?

I hope we all can carry those questions in our hearts as we go about our lives, and that we answer them in a way that brings peace to ourselves and others.

The God of Endings will come for us all. But we can influence how bitter or sweet our endings may be.