A Bad Day For Life...

My best friend’s brother died tonight. He was very young, he had a heart attack. Of course he has a wife and three beautiful kids. It’s weird, because our lives are starting to mirror each other in the worst possible way. He was very young,, as my brother was when he passed, my brother was also a father of three very young children. She lost her father in her teens, I lost mine in my teens. And a part of me feels like it’s my fault. There’s a cancer, stronger than the disease that’s plagued my family, and I hate to turn this into something about me, but it is. Starting in about 1992 my family has been plagued with a weird sort of death toll. It flirted with my mom twice, in ’92 and ’94 with breast cancer. While receiving radiation they accidentally nipped her lung and it’s dropped her life expectancy. In ‘95 my niece died of cancer, in ‘96 my cousin. My oldest sister in ’97, my closest sister in ’98. My oldest and closest brother in ’01. Then my dad died in 2002.

On top of this, of all of this, I had a very close coworker that died in 2004, a dear friend that died in 2003, along with the dissolve of four very close friendships between the years of 2002 and now.

There’s something about loss, any kind of loss, that puts you on edge. You start to wonder, "who’s next?" and your life becomes diseased in a sense. You don’t want to invite anyone in because you know that once you do they will be excised out by some force. You try to pick wisely, who has the least additional baggage, who has the least to lose, but it always comes and hits you back in the face. And it’s hard being the one who dies, but it’s harder in a way to be the one left behind. Because you spend your days and nights asking why? Praying to God to give an answer that never seems to come. You really do start to think that maybe it’s you, maybe you’re the cancer that’s killing everyone off. Then every unreturned phone call turns into a search for the body. Every unanswered email becomes an attack on your friendship. Every little gesture becomes grand because there is no such thing as subtlety anymore.
Then you realize that it’s ridiculous and there’s no way you have the absolute power to effect anything much less the lives of people around you… but then someone else dies, or leaves, or disappears, and you begin to wonder.

I'm learning, to kind of not expect the absolute worse of every situation. And of course the closer I come to realization, the more tragedy seems to happen around me, but I refuse to give up hope. It's an awkward existence, but much better than the alternative I assume.
So this post wasn't really to do anything but rant, let off some steam. I feel vindicated in a way, I wasn't around when my dad died, (I couldn't have handled it so I'm glad I wasn't), and my brother died in Omaha so my SIL did all of those arrangements. I'm glad I can be of help to someone who's lost someone, but it sucks to have anyone in that position.

RIP Anthony Page, God bless your family and friends during this sad time.