Just Another Day

Watch out, 'cause here it comes: Mortality. I know it well, because I belong to the Dead Dads Club. Every time I think to cringe in grief, I am reminded of the vast number of kids who have lost a parent when they were younger, or older, or the same age. Truth is, as I wander around my middle age, I know that the number of people I know who belong to the Passed-Away Parents Club will do nothing but grow.
I also know what the worst part about that is: It makes you smell your own mortal coil. How many more trips around the sun? Watch your sugar intake and your cholesterol. Get plenty of exercise, then get plenty of rest. You have to think more about being alive the more you stay alive.
I was lucky enough to be a charter member of the Dead Roommate Club as well. This gave me all kind of emotional currency as I headed into adulthood. Other friends of mine would stare in awe as I regaled them with stories of denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Trouble is, I kept forgetting how insulated my life tended to be, and every so often I would look up into the face of someone I knew who had experienced a loss more profound, or more recently, or just plain more experienced.
It reminds me of the survey that was done some years ago about the effects of divorce on kids relative to the age their parents split. Turns out there was no discernible difference between the kids whose parents divorced when they were young versus those who experienced it later. There's never a good time to lose your parents. There's never a good time to lose anyone. Life, though at times excrutiating, is far to short.
"There's an old joke. Uh, two elderly women are at a Catskills mountain resort, and one of 'em says: "Boy, the food at this place is really terrible." The other one says, "Yeah, I know, and such ... small portions." Well, that's essentially how I feel about life. Full of loneliness and misery and suffering and unhappiness, and it's all over much too quickly." - Woody Allen in "Annie Hall"