Look ….. look over there by the door. Do you see the elderly couple standing there, undecided as to how they ought to proceed?
He is saying to her, “You don’t know what lies ahead. Let me go first. I will check it out and make sure that everything is okay.”
She pauses, then shakes her head. “No, that’s okay. I will go ahead. Don’t worry, I will be fine.”
Or maybe the conversation did not go that way. Maybe he is saying to her, “After you my dear.”
She would reply, “No please. You go first.”
Then he would respond a bit more forcefully, “No, no. I insist.”
It seems that we are looking at two old folks, clearly fond of each other and comfortable in how they relate to each other. Their conversation, either version, seems to be nothing more than a courteous, but innocuous, exchange. Maybe not.
They are old, maybe older than you first thought. The door in front of them is the door that leads from this world to the next. It is the door that each of us will pass through when we die.
Some of us will stand at that door alone. No partner at our side. No discussion of who should go first.
For others, those who have been blessed with an enduring partnership, the question of “Who goes first” is real and fraught with implication.
You might cast yourself as the brave one, the one who would take the leap first. Insisting that you go first shows that you are not afraid to die. Brave, of course, but to what end? What would you have achieved? Probably nothing.
You would, however, be avoiding survivor’s grief. The immeasurable anguish of being alone in places just recently shared with your partner.
Death brings sorrow for those left behind. The cost of loving is pain. But to borrow the words of Alfred Lord Tennyson, “Tis better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all.”
Go first? Which would you choose?