Saying Unalive does not change the fact that someone has died

Unalive is now used instead of saying someone died. This baffles me because I have been dealing with people dying since kindergarten. I don't understand where the fear of one of the most natural occurrences on earth comes from.

I can recall the summer of 1963 when Uncle Jim died. I was five and he was my maternal great-grandmother's brother-in-law, and everyone in the community called him Uncle Jim the same way we all called my great-grandmother Florence Aunt Florence.

I don't remember the funeral, but I can vividly recall standing in the Blue Ridge Baptist Church cemetery. The dirt was rich and red after they lowered his casket into the ground. My feet were sinking, and my five-year-old brain thought it was quicksand.

Sometime within the next year, "Papa" died. His name was Jetson Wade, and he was the great-grandfather of my cousins who lived near my home. He passed away in his 90s, and I remember his body remained in his house in his bedroom the night before the funeral.

I went to see him along with my cousins, and he looked as if he were sleeping. My grandmother said she could never sleep in a house with a dead body. I didn't understand why Papa would hurt anyone in death when he loved us all in life.

The sky looked hazy as if it were going to rain, and lightning flashed in the distance.. There was this big tree to the left of me that looked like something out of a horror movie.  As I looked at it, I said to myself," That tree looks like lightning might strike it.

A few years ago, a relative asked me to drive them to visit some family graves. When I glanced at the scary tree, I realized it had been struck by lightning. It was now dead, and there were no leaves, only branches and a spot where the bark was burned away.

Children today have a grief counselor when a classmate dies, but for decades, this was not the case. I had a fifth-grade classmate drown and a sixth-grade classmate killed by a car.

No one offered any special counseling, and life went on after the funerals. I am not being insensitive, but just wondering why younger generations seem to need coddling rather than being taught that life and death happen.

Both of my sons had neigbhorhood friends who were shot to death in the early 2000s. One of them lay in the street for five hours before the coroner arrived. Nobody came through the neighborhood to talk to the other young people or offer support.

Recently there was a knock on my front door. There were four people from a grief taskforce and three police officers. They wanted to offer assistnace to neighbors because a nine-yer-old had been hit by a car a few days earlier. The child lived but in 2025 it was believed that neighbors needed assistance dealing with an accident that did not result in a death.

My older cousins shared that one of their teenage neighbors was hit by a car in the 1960s and died. There was no grief couceling and after the funeral life resumed.

My therapist friend suggested that those of us who did not have any assistance are dealing with unresolved trauma today which may be why some became addicted to alcohol and drugs.

When I said I don't drink to excess and never did drugs he said maybe my pnnic attacks were related to childhood trauma and I did not know it. He also told me that older generations could handle situations much better than those growing up today and I find this sad.

As a teenager, I often sang in the choir during funerals. My cousins and I would also go to the church after the funeral home placed a body inside on the day of the funeral. We could gaze at them in awe.

One time, the body of a woman named Evelyn shifted in the casket as it was being set down. My cousins and I were at the door of the church, and we thought she was moving on her own and ran out screaming. After my grandmother explained, I was never afraid of dead bodies again.

When you grow up attending funerals, seeing dead bodies in the home, and going to grave sites, death does not affect you like it does those who believe the Hollywood version.

When you have acquaintances gunned down as my sons have the realities of life are more vivid than if you grew up in aneighborhood where these things did not happen.

As a young adult my grandmother would send me to funeral homes so I coudl report to her how a deceased person looked. She wanted to now if they were dressed nice and how many flowers were there.

I know people who sat up all night with deceased realtives when the bodies were in the home but Hollywood has made everyone afraid with their fictionalized versions of death.

Movies tell us that deceased bodies, which have been embalmed, can come to life and sit up in a coffin. In reality, an embalmed body has all the organs removed, so they cannot open their eyes and reach for you.

The spirit that gives life has left the body, so it cannot harm you. Still, I understand that people who are not used to death and don't hear about heaven have fears and questions.