You Can’t Beat Death, But You Can Still Live

Toni served grape juice to us in small glass cups, always at room temperature. She’d made it herself. It was a bit thick, sweet, and slightly tart. She always placed the jar (not a pitcher) on the table in front of us on a crocheted coaster like it was the most natural thing in the world. My wife and I would sit together on her worn floral couch, nodding along as she told us stories we already knew.

She talked about her children, her years in the Netherlands, her time singing with “The Choir.” She spoke about faith, service, and neighbors. Her accent still carried Haarlem in it—soft but certain, like the trace of another time that hadn’t quite faded.

Sometimes I’d glance at the clock, anxious to leave. Pharmacy school was demanding for my wife, and I was always behind on something in my own work — in mechanical engineering school and, well, work. But other times, I’d let myself settle in. The light through her front window had a way of softening the whole room, and the grape juice, even though it was warm, felt oddly comforting.

It’s been twenty-one years since Toni died. She seemed so vibrant when we visited, so alive in her routines, that I didn’t realize we were seeing her in the closing days of her life. Death feels impossible when someone is still telling stories, still fussing over refreshments, and still showing up in the smallest ways.

She lived in the same house on Girard Avenue for sixty-three years. The same neighborhood. The same garden. The same familiar walls that carried the echoes of her children, choir rehearsals, and quiet Sunday mornings. There was something sacred about her steadiness.

Toni was born in Haarlem, the Netherlands, and came to the United States at nineteen. She spent thirty-two years singing with a world-renowned choir, twenty-five years serving her community, and a lifetime tending the simple joys of her corner of the world. She was gracious, steady, and unhurried. She didn’t chase achievement; she tended to belonging.

And then, like every one of us eventually will, she ran out of time.

Death will come to all of us. We can’t outrun it. We can’t work fast enough, build enough, or matter enough that it won’t catch up to us eventually. Even so, I’ve often equated motion with meaning, as if I could build my way past mortality. But Toni’s life was different. She didn’t rush. She didn’t resist the passage of time. She lived inside it.

When I think of her now, I see her hands so thin, lined, and moving carefully as she poured that grape juice. I see how she smiled when we listened, how she laughed at her own repeated stories. She never apologized for forgetting she’d already told them. She just kept talking, kept remembering, and kept sharing pieces of a life well-loved.

Tagore once wrote, “Death is not extinguishing the light; it is only putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.” I think Toni lived that way, like someone who knew the dawn was real.

She never spoke about dying. She spoke about living: her husband who died years before she did, her children, her faith, and her songs. I know I never told her how much those visits mattered to us. Her steadiness was a map of what a full, well-lived life looks like. I hadn’t really appreciated that until now. Her life wasn’t loud or spotless, but it was faithful.

Maybe that’s what she taught me, and I’m only now starting to understand: you can’t beat death, but you can still live. You can live deeply, generously, right up to the edge of it. You can live in a way that leaves something kind behind.

Toni’s gone now. Her house has likely been remodeled. The garden changed hands. But her story—her voice, her quiet way of making a simple afternoon feel eternal—stays with me.

We spend so much of our lives fighting to make things last, when maybe the better task is to let things matter while they’re here.

I think about that sometimes when I’m in my own version of her living room where my kids are laughing while I do the dishes, time slipping by unnoticed. She’d probably smile at the mess, pour me a glass of grape juice, and remind me that this, too, is living.

And that is enough.