Maura McInerney-Rowley
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I grew up in Philadelphia, raised by two loving lesbian moms alongside my older sister and our beloved golden retriever. My mother’s battle with breast cancer, which began when I was just five years old, profoundly shaped my outlook on life and death.
My transition to adulthood was marked by the loss of my mother during my junior year of college. She died less than two months before my 21st birthday (which we had been planning for together), and it rocked me. I graduated from college adrift, feeling unmoored and unsure of what I wanted to do with my life. All I knew was that I wanted to enjoy what was left of it because why not, if you could die tomorrow? I adopted a “go big or go home” attitude and ended up becoming a wedding planner for the rich and famous in Aspen.
Interestingly, years later, it was at a Colorado wedding (where I was a guest, not the planner) that I took another unexpected step in the journey that began with my mother’s death.
On a sunny August morning in Boulder, I woke up excited and energized for the day of joyful festivities ahead of me. I was up in the mountains to celebrate the wedding of a couple I cherish dearly. The bride was a dear friend whom I’d initially bonded with over losing a parent around the same age, and she’d asked me to read a beautiful poem about lost loved ones during the ceremony. Little did I know the poem would soon take on new meaning when, within hours of waking, we received the devastating news: A guest (one of the bride and groom’s close friends from college) had tragically died the night before. He was 30 years old—the same age as me.
Looking back, the wedding was a pivotal moment that sparked my deeper life’s mission: to reimagine end-of-life care and transform the denial of death into a celebration of life.
For death is not the opposite of life, but an integral part of life. That doesn’t mean it’s easy, or that we shouldn’t grieve. But it means that if we can expand ourselves to hold both the joy and the pain, the love and the grief, we might come into a relationship with death that is life-affirming rather than fear-based.
Whether death is expected or not, we will never be ready. Death has a finality that you can’t 100% prepare for. However, what we can do and what we can control is how we celebrate and honor someone’s life. We can talk about it. And we can share our end-of-life wishes to alleviate some of the pain for loved ones when we die.
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Review Maura’s courses and workshops here.