LIZA BURKE
Liza Burke died this weekend at the age of 21. My son called me to tell me, but the shock of her death really hit me when I was looking at Apple News and there was an ABC story about Liza’s death with two beautiful photographs of her full of life and a wonderful tribute to her by her mother. She was on a spring break trip in Mexico during her senior year. She was leaping into the water from rocks above when she she got a headache, went in to take a nap and then couldn’t be roused by friends. She was rushed to a hospital and then flown back to the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida where she was discovered to have a brain tumor that turned out to be inoperable. She was moved to hospice care in a seaside cottage with her family with her when she died.
She lived on Melrose Avenue when younger and was good friends with my two granddaughters who lived just down the street. Liza would have graduated this week from the University of Georgia, Caroline is also graduating this week.
It is so hard to respond to the death of a young, vibrant person. I have no way of adequately responding. There is nothing I could tell her family. Anything I can say is empty and pointless. There is nothing her friends can say. All her family can do is to hug each other and make their way through this terrible time.
Death of a young person is unbearable. In earlier centuries people had large families and often a number of the children died. But now the death of a young person seems impossible, until it happens.
In the article her mother celebrates her life and it certainly seems that she lived large, having all kinds of experiences in her 21 years. Maybe her life is all we can hold on to, her life or the life of anyone who dies, such as the life of Joan Moser whom we memorialized two days ago.
Part of the reason that I am blindside by her death is because I and others are so busy living that we can’t imagine anyone close to us, particularly anyone young and vibrant, dying.
For some reason we accept old people dying. But when I think about it, we are here so briefly that there really doesn’t seem to be much difference between being here briefly for 21 years or being here briefly for 85 years. Both are just a moment in time. We know that in all the eons before our birth we weren’t here and in all the eons after our death we won’t be here and that our brief moment is just the flicker of an eyelash, a blink of the eye. We know it but can’t believe it.
I guess if you feel that you will be in heaven for eternity after your death and that in heaven you will be more fully alive in the presence of God, then death just seems a transition. But I don’t believe that although I won’t argue with people who do. Somehow, for me all we have is this brief passage and all we can do is to live as fully as we can while here. And it sounds to me as if Liza did that. Her mother makes that point and it comforts her. It also comforts me. Living fully may be more important than living long.
But that doesn’t much help Liza’s family, I don’t think, and it doesn’t help me, really. Death finally, when she lay helplessly was probably a blessing for her, but it leaves a huge hole for her family and friends.
It is such a mystery that we are here at all and such a mystery that after being fully alive we are then not here at all. For me our life is a mystery and our death is a mystery. In my old age with death just around the corner both life and death are a mystery and I can hardly believe either one, but here I am. And here was Liza and she brightened the world while she was here as her mother points out. Just look at her.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 