Death in a Small Town

Today I began to list out all of the people who have passed away in my town this year. I began doing this because there have been two funerals this week already. I live in Unalakleet, Alaska, a town of about 700-750 people. Everybody knows everybody and everyone’s business. We wave to one another as we pass by on the streets. We all greet one another at the gym during basketball games and wrestling tournaments. We look out for each other’s children when they are playing out or running across the street without looking both ways.

I have lived here since I was 13-years-old, when my grandma pretty much adopted me after my parents divorced. I have seen many elders pass away and have babysat many of the new babies. I have witnessed, first-hand, the effects of climate change. I’ve noticed the winters becoming warmer, the snow piles becoming shorter, and the river ice going out earlier and earlier in the spring.

I have seen our culture dying out over the years and it saddens me. Just in this last year alone I have counted 23 people passing away. That is about 3% of our people! Many of the people who have passed away were elders, but there have also been young people in the mix.

There have been two suicides: one teenage boy and one young man in his late twenties. Just recently one of our young men was run over in Florida. Another man in his 30’s was shot to death when he attacked another man in his house with a knife. One man died while driving between villages in the middle of winter. I’m not sure of the details, but alcohol was involved and most likely he froze to death. Unhealthy living habits also took lives: diabetes, lung cancer, liver disease, etc.

Last winter a well-loved and respected elderly lady suffering from Alzheimer’s disease walked out of the village in a winter blizzard and went missing for months. A search and rescue team of more than 120 volunteers did a shoulder to shoulder sweep of town to no avail. Even in less-than-optimal weather conditions: wind gusts of 40 mph, volunteers swept the town, digging up snow hills, looking in sheds, porches and unused vehicles. Facebook posts were shared. Phone calls were made. Prayers were said. Day-in-day-out. Search and rescue dogs were flown in to sniff out the entire town as well as the surroundings of town. We all feared that she may have gotten lost and began walking up the river and fell through the ice. It wasn’t until the springtime that bird hunters came across her body on the tundra just north of the village.

Each person who passed had his or her own deep connection to the village. Some were parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, commercial fishermen, sock knitters, joke tellers, a place for others to go when they had nowhere else to go, a best friend, a water-hauler, a school cook, a friendly smile, a road grader, etc.

With each passing elder more and more traditions have been stolen from us. When my classmate took his life, many of us were left with questions. We had not realized that he suffered from depression. The accidents that took a few lives had us gasping for breath. Young children have been left without a mother or father.

In recent years death has been coming in threes. Everyone in town will tell you so. When news unfolds that a person has passed away after a long period of no deaths, people fear to hear about the next two people who will pass. It may be someone you have just seen at the post office. It may be your grandma who you thought was too stubborn to let go. It may be your classmate who secretly struggled with alcoholism and had nowhere to turn for help.

Many people tend to say, “He lived a long life” or “At least she is no longer suffering.” It’s so easy to say or agree with these, yet so hard to let go. It becomes harder to collect stories from suffering elders: whether it is due to them being hard of hearing, their memory loss, or other ailments. Many of us fear to ask questions because we don’t want to be a burden on them.

In some cases, death is so sudden and unexpected that we don’t get the chance to say, “I love you” or “good-bye”. We don’t realize that our last conversation would be at A.C. the day before the life-stealing heart attack. We never realize that our words can change a person’s mind about living. We don’t realize that sometimes all it takes is a smile or a “hello. How are you doing?”

In some cases the pain is not felt right away when a person passes. Sometimes the pain does not come for years. I was only five-years-old when my maternal grandpa passed away. I didn’t know he was gone forever. Now that I am an adult I find myself wondering if I would be more self-confident with a strong male role model in my life. I find myself wanting my great-aunt Alice to be at her house when I need advice. I want to go visit my great-grandma, Anna, and ask her about her childhood. I want to see her hanging strips in her smoke house and driving her four-wheeler through town again.

In small towns, deaths are felt by all. In small towns one person’s life IS a huge deal. In small towns, when people begin dying in the double digits in one year, you begin to worry. You begin to think the end is coming. With deaths coming left and right your hopes sink through the crawl space.

Our only hope now is to embrace those closest to us and to talk to our elders while they are still around. Our only hope is to continue the traditions passed onto us. Our only hope is to build one another up with compassion.

Life is far too short, but we make of it what we can.