Tuesday, February 07, 2006

In The Midst of Life...

...we are in death.

I am reeling, bewildered, at what life has handed us in the past two weeks.

On January 28th the phone rang. It was a college friend calling to tell us that he had flown out to San Francisco to be with another college friend who was in intensive care. On a respirator, on dialysis. In a coma. All of this because of his leukemia, which had been diagnosed--when? I'm still not clear on that. Certainly not more than a week before. Every day we got updates, some better, some worse; by February 3rd he was dead. Gone. This post will be absolutely riddled with cliche from this point forward but it's the only language at my disposal right now.

I can't share his name or many details because I want to protect his privacy. I will only say that it is incomprehensible that someone who was, at every moment I knew him, so full of life, can be dead. That someone so dear, so sweet, should have to leave the world at 34. That someone who was so loving to my children will never have children of his own. That he will never grow old. That I will never see him again.

And as if that weren't enough, last night I got a call from my father. My last living grandparent--my maternal grandmother--died almost ten years ago; but my family had one remaining link to the great-grandparent generation, my father's godmother. She was no relation, but our families have been friends for nearly a century (her father was best friends with my great-great-uncle). Daddy called me around eight to tell me she was in the hospital, and around 8:30 to tell me she was gone.

Now, this is the opposite case: someone who got to live a long, full life and died the kind of death I'm sure she would have wished for--peaceful and quick, with all her faculties intact up to the end.

But I'll be damned if I understand why anyone ever has to die. And why I have to mourn two people I loved in the same horrible February.

1 comment:

Schnozz said...

Oh, no. I'm so sorry.