The funny thing about death is that sometimes it's expected, and sometimes it comes as a surprise. An elderly person could be in hospice for months, allowing their family to say goodbye and prepare themselves for life without them. Otherwise, a phonecall can surprise you, leaving you devastated. In either case, it's traumatic for everyone. Whenever I visited the morgue to work on an autopsy, I briefly wondered how the families felt. Did they know what happened? Did they want to know? What was the last thing they said to them? How are they handling life without this person? Then I would wonder about the person on the table in front of me. What was their last thought? What were their last words? What were their hopes and dreams, and what were they like? However, these curiosities were fleeting because I had a job to do.

I hadn't thought about death personally since I was a child, until March. In the early morning hours of March 29th, 2019, I was beginning to wake up. There was still snow on the ground, my room was chilly, and I was scrolling through facebook when my dad called. I immediately had a bad feeling which turned out to be warranted. My grandfather had died unexpectedly the night before. 

The world stopped, I think my heart did too before it broke. I had just spoken to him the night before. He and my mom had just gotten home from the car show and they were excited to tell me about the car they were thinking of buying for him. The last thing that I said to him before I hung up the phone was, "I love you". 

The funny thing about death is that when someone dies, you feel like you never did enough for them, and you never feel like you said enough to them. The funny thing about my grandfather's death is I feel like I wasn't done learning from him. The man who has inspired me since the beginning of my time on this planet. Whenever people asked me how I was inspired to pursue a career in criminal science, I always said, "my grandfather was an FBI agent, and a lawyer, and a sailor, and a paleontologist". What I didn't say was that he left an impressive legacy, and some big shoes to fill. His death brought people from all over the country, young and old, to say goodbye. He filled an entire sanctuary with people who loved him, respected him, and missed him. I want to strive to live up to his legacy and make him proud. 

The funny thing about death is, there's no wrong way to grieve, but it's hard to learn that. It's been seven months since he passed away. He left us two weeks before my birthday, four weeks before his 84th birthday, six weeks before my graduation, and six months before his 55th wedding anniversary. The funny thing about grief is that experts tell us that it takes at least a year to really start to feel better, but right now it feels like one year is an entire lifetime. The funny thing about his death is that I know he had a very good last day, and that he would have hated getting older, but that doesn't make me feel much better.