Yesterday, I popped onto the Trapdoor Society (the website I host for women who enjoy self-education) and discovered to my shock and pain that one of our members had died of a massive heart attack on Saturday in the wee hours of the morning. She was 47 and homeschooled three children. Her oldest had just graduated from high school and looks forward to college in the fall.
One of her most recent posts to our forum included her calculations of how old she'd be when her youngest left home: 63.
I feel sucker punched.
This is someone I've known online for eight years.
We had a running joke about stupid movies. Biggest hit with both her kids and mine: "Kung Pao." Makes me smile thinking of our connection over inane films.
So yesterday while I drove around crying, Tim McGraw started singing "Live Like You Were Dying" where this forty-something guy discovers he has cancer and suddenly goes sky-diving and bull-riding and talks sweeter and looks deeper...
Taking my cue from Tim, I snapped at the kids and obsessively squeegeed the windows. I didn't spend the day enjoying my children or savoring the gorgeous weather or planning trips to the Rocky Mountains. Instead I got grumpy and ornery and flat out mad at death (and took it out on a few people around me).
What the hell is life? Going to the great beyond (if such a place exists) seems such small compensation for missing your child's send-off to college, wedding, first grandchild and on and on. And in this case, no chance to say good-bye. Just poof - gone, in an instant.
I cried and stomped and snarled and read and slept. I got up and walked like a zombie to my box of a jillion journals. I was hunting for one from high school for some reason, when I accidentally opened the journal chronicling my courtship with Jon.
Tears and more tears. In love at 22 - the over the top, head flipped, body twisting feelings of falling for someone godlike. Jon was a god.
And it was my mother who blessed the relationship first, who saw that it was the right one for me... How we need our mothers.
Life is fragile. We live just on the other side of death all the time and don't even know it.
Today as I went running to the tunes of U2, I could look back and realize I liked the decisions I've made in my life so far. I don't have to play catch up, I don't wish I'd done lots of other things.
Every time I've seen the chance, I've taken it (Thanks to the early influence of Steve Winwood).
I hope Devin had too. She seemed like the type.
I'll miss her.
Peace to all of you, my invisible, yet very real, cyber friends. Thanks for sharing your selves with me. We only have a little while to do so, so let's keep it up.
4 comments:
Julie,
I love the artwork you used to honor Devin (Chagall?) -- so appropo.
---Beth
It's amazing how close we can become to people we never actually meet, except in cyberspace. My thoughts and prayers are with you during this time of loss.
Beautiful tribute!
Carpe Diem!
Susan
About six years or so ago a woman I knew on the internet died. She was such a warm giving person. We used to email back and forth and even though I didn't know her *in person*, I was really saddened to get the email. Sometimes these things just blindside us.
Post a Comment