Sunday, May 17, 2009

Three Deaths

George, Lew, my father. Two generational contemporaries dead within days, one dead almost 30 years ago recalled by fluke in the same week.

George was a humorous cyberfriend I never met in the flesh, but I had a good sense of his character.

Lew would not have died in the arms of his wife if I had not told him, years ago, that she planned to dump him as a boyfriend. And if he had not redoubled his campaign to win her heart.

My father's death was a tragedy for the personal mess he left in his wake, but it's a psychic mess I had long ago cleaned up until I ran into someone who asked me if I had heard of a man by the same name ... my father, by the details.

Then there's my own death, of which I have dreamed. I dreamed of everyone carrying on just fine without me. (Drat!) No funeral cortege to Arlington, no heads of state flying in. Nothing. Just another nobody gone.

Death talk is unfashionable in this society, in which we proclaim the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Yet death is a reality of life. Closer when those not far from one's own age begin to die.

Now you know why I haven't posted anything. I was thinking about death.

2 comments:

Girlplustwo said...

C - am sorry for your loss(es). Truly.

heartinsanfrancisco said...

Many of my high school and college classmates have died, and I am grateful to be here still, especially since a psychic with known powers told me long ago that I would die at the age I am now. I've tried not to think of it as I'm aware of self-fulfilling prophesies, but like a child's loose tooth that simply must be worried by ones tongue, I can't stop. I wake up every day with surprise and delight and cannot wait until my next birthday.

I wish you many more birthdays, too, marking off joy-filled years. You are not a nobody.