death

it seems like such a soft word for such a hard, harsh reality. and even in reality it's hard to grasp it, hard to comprehend the real-ness of it. we are surrounded by it. you can't watch tv or listen to the radio for one day w/out hearing about someone dying and we've become so used to it that it's almost like white noise. we've come to accept it because while we all know we all will die thinking about what that actually means is too much to handle.

it's like a far away thing. yes, it will happen to me, but not today. i am young, i am healthy. it will happen when i'm tired and old and possibly sick and possibly can't remember my children's names. regardless of your religious or spiritual beliefs, this life we are living now is the only thing we know for certain. it is the only tangible thing we have.

it is hard to even begin to imagine not being alive. not being with my husband. not watching my children grow up and marry and have children of their own.

some deaths are easier to deal with or accept, not that they are easy by any means. and even when you can accept them they still confound you because that is it. there is nothing else. there are no more phone calls or stories or anything. just nothingness.

yesterday i was having lunch w/ my friend broad and the hubs called. his brother, his 45 year old brother died. they live in florida so it is far away and not in your face and it is hard to grasp and unimaginable to realize that his two sons, who are close in age to both of my kids, went to school yesterday and came home to no father. how does that work? how can that be?

this is the bil the hubs went to visit last summer. he had been having health issues, serious issues off and on for a couple of years. he was on dialysis and waiting on a kidney transplant. he was at dialysis yesterday and his blood pressure dropped too low too fast and they couldn't fix it. how can they not fix it? they are doctors for god's sake. how do you call a woman and tell her her husband has just died during his dialysis treatment? how do you pick your kids up from school to tell them their dad died? how?

we had planned to go there for 4th of july this summer, like the hubs did last summer. his brother was looking forward to it.

he will be cremated. i have come to fucking hate cremations. there is no closure. there is no goodbye.

and though i keep pushing the thoughts off into that locked closet in the far corner of that dark, wet basement in my brain i know it's still there. that thought that but for a stroke of.....i don't even know what, it could have been me getting that phone call yesterday. it could have been me that had to pick up my kids and tell them.

and then i think what the fuck are we doing? why are we here? why do we work jobs we don't love? why do we deal with things we don't want to deal with when we don't know how much time we have? why are we even bothering? what is the fucking point?