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I have now seen seven starched deathbeds, their occupants fading quickly beneath the gleam of the hospital floresents, of the low, late October sun, of the frosty February morning light. I have been to eleven lily-scented funerals where I always wore the same black dress—slinky and strapless with a cardigan pulled over for modesty’s sake. I have written and given two trite eulogies. I’ve eaten countless deviled eggs and store-bought cookies and raw broccoli florets in the basements of churches all along the east coast. I’ve laughed cruelly at tearful renditions of “Knocking on Heaven’s Door.” I’ve given sympathy and I’ve received it, or tried to.

Over the past eight years, death has ruled my life. So has the sloppy, soppy clichés that go along with such a melodramatic statement. This parade of finality and mortality just seems to have found a steady route along my front door. And I’m not talking about the peaceful, went-in-his-sleep kind of death—I’m talking long, drawn out, death-rattle-for-days type death, and the kind that is the sudden, mysterious, took-in-his-prime type.

It began with a beloved uncle, a Catholic priest who despite admitting to himself in middle age that he was gay and desperately lonely, still made the choice to dedicate his life to god. When they found his cancer it had so thoroughly occupied each component of his body that they were at a loss to find its origin. Next was my mother who, at 51 decided not to go to the doctor with a worrisome pain until she had me packed and moved-in to my first year in college. Within a year she would die with gasping breath on her side of the bed she shared with my father. After that and within a year was my maternal grandfather—cancer, too and just as sudden and torturous. Then another uncle, who drowned beneath his surfboard on a shallow sandbar off the Jersey shore. There were others—another grandfather, a grandmother, another uncle, a godmother. Each of these deaths were initiated with hospital visits—mostly to comfort the dying but once to identify a body. That was followed by “final plans,” by phone calls to notify the family, by finding funeral directors and grave plots and the right kind of reading or insight to give the funerals’ officiators. They concluded with efforts to give away or dissolve the deceased’s possessions, homes, pets. It has become strangely routine, regular—a bizarre banality of trauma.

At the beginning of this long trail of death, I spent every energy immersing myself in it. I cried a lot. I tried positive thinking briefly, and when that didn’t work, copious drinking. I continually asked why and how did these things could happen, as though the answers would somehow cure the problem or at least console me. I couldn’t stop thinking that things were turning out the wrong way—that my life and the lives of others were meant to be something much different than the grim shaded shapes they were becoming. I gave myself to grief the way some give themselves to god. I dedicated morning, afternoon and night to it. I went on cemeterial pilgrimages and brooded over minor details of monumental events. It consumed me and I let it.

At the gathering held after my mother’s funeral, the house was hot and crowded and filled with people who wanted to hug, or to relay some bit of supposed wisdom. I was overwhelmed and exhausted, still stuck in that tight black dress and chunky heels. After the first hour, I felt a sudden, terrible urge to flee so I made my way to the backdoor and broke out of it into the November air. I had no coat or scarf and the crisp cold stung my face and arms but if felt good. It felt like I could breathe for the first time in days.

There in the dark beyond the patio furniture stood a man about my age, sucking a cigarette with his hands in his pocket. I recognized him. We had gone to high school together but we weren’t close and I was shocked to see him here, at my family’s house in his best funeral attire. He turned to me as I closed the door and took the cigarette out of his mouth, ready to say something but I stopped him by holding up my hand. The last thing I wanted to hear were more condolences—that was why I had escaped into the cold Michigan winter. He looked hurt and concerned, and so I knew I needed to speak.

“Can I have one of those?” I asked, pointing to the red ember of his cigarette. He nodded and took a red package out of his pocket, opened it and handed me a filtered Marlborogh and a light.

I had never smoked before—never had the desire to. I was something of a health nut and worried, well, worried about getting cancer and dying a terrible death dragged down by lungs blackened and polyped like those showed to us in health class. But there on the back porch, it seemed like the only right thing to do in the world was to take a drag from that cigarette. There was nothing stopping me. I accepted his light and sucked—the smoke rushed from my mouth in a cloud that’s dimensions were accentuated by the cool air. It was one of the sweetest breaths I’d ever taken.

That night, instead of crying more or asking why or going over again and again the details of my mother’s last moments—how the dog was there in the room with us, the low moan my father made, the way she squeezed my hand a full minute after her final breath--I smoked a half pack of this man’s cigarettes and I drank a pint of tequila. My lungs and my mouth were too filled with smoke to ask why and how—in fact, I stopped asking anything at all. I gave myself up to smoke and cancer and the inevitability of death and the truth that it is always looming. It didn’t make me feel better, but it didn’t make me feel worse.

Seven years later and 5 deaths later, I still smoke. But I also still ask questions.