Death is a complicated, tricky thing. It is something that I think most people push to the depths of their subconscious until it comes up and hits you smack on in the face.

It is hard to expect death. You know it is inevitable but it is something you don’t want to imagine happening to yourself or anyone around you so you don’t look for it. In some ways, I think it is a social structure we have created around death, that we should fear it, or be intimidated by it. However, it is understandably difficult to understand because we have no idea what lies beyond death if anything.

We don’t know if death is the hard end of the line were we immediately cease to exist after it happens or if our souls and spirits continue to live just without a physical presence. There are so many questions one may have related to the subject but they go unanswered because who really wants to speak of the day when we become separated from the world we live in and lose the opportunity to be side by side with the people, places, things, and opportunities that mean the most to us.

The experience of death is a rite of passage.

It is a rite of passage that we all must undergo not just with our own personal passing’s, but we have to undergo the rite of passage that is experiencing other people’s deaths. We have to learn how to grieve and move on without a person who had in one way or another an impact on our lives, be it a negative or a positive one.

I will admit that I feel as though I have not yet lost a significant amount of people in my life. I have lost a grandmother, a few great-grandparents, a dog, and a teacher. There have also been the acquaintances from church and other family friends, but in comparison to what I could have lost, I feel like I have been lucky.

What I have learned from the most recent death that has happened in my life is how jolting the news of a death is and how it rocks you to your core.

On a recent Friday night, I was in the kitchen of the house I live where it was 11:30 p.m. and my night to be cleaning the kitchen. Wanting a quick break from the chores, I, like many other people, clicked open my phone and started to scroll through Facebook. Then I stopped at a post from one of my elementary school teachers. I was excited to see this post because I had noticed that it had been awhile since she had been active on Facebook.

But then my heart sank.

It was a post done by a loved one of hers regretfully informing her Facebook community that she had passed away the evening before after a fight with cancer.

I couldn’t believe it, chills ran through me and I just sort of stopped. I knew I needed to get back to cleaning but I also needed a moment to process what had I had just read. I shook myself off a little bit and started to take out the trash but I felt like I went into a shell where it was just me, alone with my thoughts trying to process the news.

I didn’t want to talk to anyone else around me, feeling as though they wouldn’t understand why I was so upset over losing a teacher I had had when I was six and seven-years-old.

This teacher had made a distinct impression on me and one that will stay with me for many years to come. Once I found out the news I texted my friend who was in that same teacher’s class with me and even she said that our teacher is still one of the biggest influences in her life. There is a piece of the two of us that is a piece of our teacher.

I didn’t talk to this teacher on a daily basis or even see her very often anymore now that I am across the country going to college, but I just took it for granted that she still lived in my neighborhood back home. And that if I ever wanted to reach out to her to check in, to say hello or to get coffee I could.

But now that will never be an option again. It also just meant something that with her being alive she got to touch the lives of others with her energy and love but now no one else will get to experience her unique vivaciousness.

But that brings the responsibility back to me and those who knew her. We have to remember to carry-on her legacy through our actions while we still have the blessing to encounter others and share what she gave to us to those we meet.

As the Dr. Seuss quote reads: “Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened!” I think this is the best encapsulation of how to move forward after losing someone who meant so much.

We may shed a few tears at the very beginning, but ultimately, we must smile because we got to enjoy the person while they were with us.

Death can teach you a lot.

Maybe, instead of viewing death as a scary, dark, unknown figure, we should look at death as a teacher. A character that while they may be stern once and a while, is here for our benefit to help us learn about ourselves and about those around us. While death hurts, most of the time out of death comes something better.

It can be a smile at a memory, change that comes about because of someone’s death, or the legacy of the person that will continue to live on for a very, very long time.