Death

This is finally not so recent that I actually dare post it.  I had to write in order to deal with a lot of what I was feeling when I got word that my friend's wife had died.  Some is a little disorganized but I think I'll leave it that way since this was just what thoughts were running through my head in dealing with this death.  Someday, I hope, I won't have several people die in a year.  I assume some folks don't have this.  I hope they don't at any rate.  I wouldn't wish losing loved ones on even my worst enemy.


I got word this morning that a friend of mine's wife died yesterday.  She's young so this doesn't make much sense.  I only know a tiny piece of the circumstances so I certainly won't go into it here.  That being said it has me thinking about life, death, and those that we surround ourselves with. 

I've spent the last several years in a high stress job that I loved.  I loved the job and the people I worked with.  They became a second family.  Unfortunately because of the type of job it was it also meant I had an unusually high number of co-workers/friends/family get killed at work.  This can make it tough to go to work everyday.  And yet you know you can't not go.

I know I'm being a bit vague but I cannot afford to be more explicit.  Despite cherishing memories with the folks I used to work with and loving my co-workers and their families this latest tragedy makes me all that much more happy I'm not working there anymore.  To tell you the truth, I was getting numb to death.  A person should not become numb to death.  A person in their early 30s should be going to weddings not funerals.  They shouldn't be struggling to try to remember the last wedding they attended.  Funerals are easy to remember at this point.  I have been to a frightening number of them.  Young people, old people, or in between it doesn't matter.  The funerals hurt.  I know, they are supposed to.  But I'm not supposed to know so much about how to set one up, what is expected at one, or how to go through the stages of grief. 

I can only imagine not knowing how to do this.  It is a numbing thing at first with denial.  Then the questions of "How? Who? When? Where?"  The "Why?" comes later.  That is more of a personal conversation rather than with the messenger.  I tend toward less anger than many.  I think this is my own thing.  I know we all die sometime and my emotions are all ready so strung out I just don't think it lets me get full blown angry.  There just isn't any point.  Sure, there are moments.  Those are usually when the "why?" comes along. 

There is just a flood of what next?  The worst, and the best, is the flood of memories that come in.  I love having the memories of the people who have died and yet they can be painful.  A conversation, a smell, a sound, a place, or whatever crazy memory creeps in.  With my Grandad it is him watching a dry British comedy and laughing like I'd never heard him laugh before.  My dad creeps up on me when I least expect it.  The most startling was a smell that put me in the mountains on horseback with my dad.  So suddenly and vividly that I was in tears before I even realized what had happened.  Other people it is one little spoken word or that hug you didn't make.  I missed out on a hug I felt like I should have given even in that moment and yet didn't.  Turns out, I should have just given the guy a hug. 

I've realized for the last 4 and a half years each year has been marked by at least one death if not several.  It is a sad thing to mark your years by death.  My poor son too.  He's 4 and someone last spring (at a funeral) asked if it was his first.  Sadly not by a long shot.  I think that particular funeral was about his 5th.

What this all boils down to is that I'm very glad to not be working.  To be spending time with my children and my husband.  And I am very ready to hunker in on our little chunk of the world and not have much of the "real" world come crashing in on me. 

So, so, glad I don't work outside the home anymore.  I was shredding paperwork  from this job yesterday and it was a great therapy.  I was surprised by how emotional it still was but hopefully some sort of closure can happen now.