“I am all that I grok.” I wanted to open with a quote from Time Enough for Love about death and dying, but oddly enough the exact phrasing escapes me (from a book I’m sure I could recite backwards and forwards any other day) and I can’t seem to find it online. It was the little rhyme at the beginning of one of the chapters about migrating. It wasn’t important. Groking seems more fitting somehow, anyway.
I’ve spent most of the last five days ruminating about death. I lost a long time friend last week. I’m not near enough to have the closure of a funeral. I’m not close enough to the wife or rest of the family to really express my condolences. I’m saddened at what I lost, and I am devastated at what they lost.
I am panicking about my own longevity. And my husbands. And everyone’s if I really stop to examine things. Doesn’t everyone? I worry about how I would function if something happened to my husband. Part of me thinks I would just stop everything. The other part rationally remembers there are little people dependant on my not just stopping and remembering to put one foot in front of the other and be functional. My brother took a moment remind me that he had an excellent example, and should something happen to both of us, that there are plenty of people to swoop in and raise the children. Which momentarily lifted my spirits. I like to be told I did something right.
What is the point of all of this? Vanity posting. Therapy. Call it what you will. A huge part of my world is now missing, and then I just remind myself that an even larger part of so many other people’s worlds are now missing, and my whining seems insignificant, as it should. But that knowledge doesn’t make this ache lessen, and it doesn’t make my world any larger. I am so very tired of my world getting smaller and smaller.
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