Subdued

I seem to be getting these calls a lot lately.

Its been just over a year since I attended the funeral of my grandmother. I still mourn her periodically, still stumble across an old photo or something that reminds me of her. Karen and I brought home a box of old photos and various items, such as a tea set, that had belonged to my grandmother, as late as this Christmas. I love having those things by which to remember her, but it amazes me in way that we are still dealing with the aftermath of her passing this recently.

I remember the last Christmas that my grandmother was home before moving to the hospital where she would finish her physical life. I’m sort of the unofficial family videographer, and somehow just knowing that that would her last Christmas at home, I remember taking extra care with the Holiday video project that year. Because I just knew.

This Christmas, I was in the same hospital visiting my paternal aunt. And, again, I took video carefully, because I just knew.  I was right. I received the call this weekend that she had passed.

Once annually is entirely too often to receive these phone calls. Granted, neither my grandmother’s or my aunt’s passing was a surprise. Neither will be my paternal grandparents’, which I fear will happen all too soon. Realistically, I think it will be within a year from today that I receive another phone call telling me that one of them is no longer here. And again I will travel for a funeral, and again deal with the aftermath.

When I consider that I’m 35, its not unusual for their generation to be moving on. What is most difficult about this, however, is that it leaves me with this unmistakable aftertaste of mortality. Several years ago, I slipped away from work for a little while to sit down with my father at a local fast food restaurant. That was the first time I remember realizing how much like my grandfather he was beginning to look…the first time I remember his appearing vulnerable instead of superhuman. This was my dad! He was the one who fixed my childhood toys when they were broken, and brought in wood for the stove during the winter! He had been Superman my entire life, but now we sat in a restaurant and the fact that he walked with a cane impacted me with a realization I hadn’t previously experienced.

The passing of my older family members, while difficult, is ultimately made easier by my faith, and the knowledge that their parting from me is merely a parting from this physical plane, and will not be permanent. I’m learning how to grieve and mourn in a healthy way, and I will get better at coping with temporary loss each time it occurs. What is most discomforting, however, is the realization of reality that one day, perhaps a couple of decades or so from now as Karen and I will likely be seeing our future children off to college, it will be my parents whose passing I will mourn. I still cannot grasp life without them. Perhaps I will eventually learn by their example as they cope with that very event.

As if all of this wasn’t morbid enough, though, there are other calls that are worse. My wife received one of those this week, notifying her that the wife of one of her grad school classmates had been involved in a head-on collision in which she was a fatality. All too sudden, all too soon.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not questioning why. I don’t think I’m entitled to an answer. I’m just learning that this is a part of life with which I must contend. I’ve experienced it before, but lately it seems as though it is becoming alarmingly frequent. I wonder if there will always be periods where loss will occur with this frequency…a sort of ebb and flow of an experience of mortality that makes me stop to appreciate the life I’m experiencing today. So poignant is this realization that it causes me to want to stop complaining about things that bother me, to stop concerning myself over something as trite as mechanical problems with a car or the expense of our power bill.  Those things just aren’t important in life.

Life is important.

Let’s not throw it away.

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