This is not going to be my usual chirpy, happy post. Those of you looking for a little levity should move onto your next distraction because I’m, at the moment, facing up to a little brevity. Here it is.
You remember how in some old Greek mythology there were some spiteful Gods up on Mt. Olympus who would decide to rain down a curse or two down on some poor unlucky human sucker here on Earth? They did it, sometimes, just for kicks but more often it was as punishment for something the dim-witted human had done. Something along the lines of sleeping with a swan or falling in love with their own reflection. That sort of thing. But, the curses I always hated in mythology were the ones that did something, instead, to the people the naughty human loved. Because, let’s all agree that having something happen to someone you love is generally harder to handle than our own misfortunes. And, here’s where I wonder where I messed up and ticked off a God or two.
Here comes the serious part.
The people that I love the deepest…as in my very close high school friend, my best work friend, best growing up friend (x2), my first serious boyfriend and even my husband….their fathers die. Unexpectedly. No pre-existing conditions. All under the age of 65.
Let that sink in because it’s true. And horrible. And they don’t happen a million years after I’m close to them like “Oh, she USED to be my close work friend but we moved on to other jobs and THEN her beloved father died.” No, we became close friends and then it happened. My old boyfriends father died about three years into our four years relationship. My husbands father shortly after our first son was born.
It’s cruel and awful and I hate it. I’m so tired of standing aside someone I love so much and aching for them as they say goodbye to their hero, their confident, their beloved Dad. And now I think my friendship should come with a warning label so there it is.
(sigh)
The 2nd part of this post comes as I think about my friend MM and her wonderful family who treated me as one of their own for 38 years. And of her beautiful Mom whose birthday was yesterday and that she spent it probably feeling little more than the terrible grief of the recent loss her husband. My own Mom sent me the new Pat Conroy book yesterday and I came across this paragraph. I both love it and abhor it but, either way, I think it’s beautifully written and worth sharing.
“But fate comes at you cat-footed, unavoidable, and bloodthirsty. The moment you are born your death is foretold by your newly minted cells as your mother holds you up, then hands you to your father, who gently tickles the stomach where the cancer will one day form, studies the eyes where melanoma’s dark signature is already written along the optic nerve, touches the back where the liver will one day house the cirrhosis, feels the bloodstream that will sweeten itself into diabetes, admires the shape of the head where the brain will fall to the ax-handle of a stroke, or listens to your heart, which, exhausted, will explode in your chest like a light going out in the world. Death lives in each one of us and begins its countdown on our birthdays and makes its rough entrance at the last hour and the perfect time.”
Fate. God-damn.
I’m going to go hug my little men now. One is watching Wubbzy with a juicebox and the other is calling from his crib, anxious to get out of his feety pajamas and start the day. That, right now, is my fate. I’ll be sure to enjoy every minute of it.
Confessions of a Serial Swooper 
[…] I started this blog in September of last year (with a blog about a trip to Dunkin’ Donuts) so that I could capture some memories that I may have otherwise forgotten. Many of the entries since then have been silly, random slices of daily family life but a few served as a way for me to work through something difficult. […]