Thursday, June 25, 2009

Death & Divorce

Funny I finally make time to type this up when I have been chewing on it for a while now. Funny, the day I finally turn on my laptop and log in here in the first time in weeks, is the day both Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson die. Consequently it is also the day I attended a funeral and devoted my evening to helplessly sitting by and watching my best friend try to make sense out of her husband telling her he wants a divorce because he does not love her.

I still spend lots of time watching my grandmother slowly move closer to death yet camped out firmly in her life regardless of the lack of quality there. Then there is the 60 plus year marriage my grandparents share that transcends quality of life despite the fact that it is killing him to care for her until death.

Johnny's dad died from cancer. He was 84 and left a wife who will have to learn to breath without the man she spent most of her long life with. Johnny lost his brother to cancer not but a few months ago and there is the fact that he has not recovered from losing his wife, Ned and it just seems cancer has a personal vendetta for this family.

Then again, lots of families could say the same thing. My young friend, Shannon could say cancer is after her. Or my childhood friend whose dad has fought it off, who lost her grandfather and now is watching her grandmother fight it. I remember when Ned was fighting for her life, it seemed everywhere I looked I saw cancer's aftermath.

Am I just getting to the age where the older generations in my life is dying off? Am I getting to the point where people in my life have tried for 10 years or so to make their marriage work and they decide to let it go? Today Farrah & Michael, but Monday Jon & Kate announced divorce. I totally get that the world is supposed to go to shit, I just feel before mighty acts of God take cities out, divorce and cancer will strip things pretty bare.

It is so easy to get comfortable where I am and allow complacency set in and forget all I went through to get here. It is too easy to forget where we are going and how little the time here will compare with eternity. It is far too convenient to forget the countless people bound for hell surrounding us because it is more natural to focus on the negative in our own lives. Nothing like a little, actually a lot, of death and divorce to help me to refocus on what is important. I may be assured of my own salvation but should that be enough? I would rather be able to say I'm the girl who pissed off the devil so often. Yeah. That's what I'm talkin bout.

1 comment:

Heidi Reed said...

the end of your post...
i've been feeling that way a lot more these days...
must be something about that...

still think you should be a writer on a professional level. you'd sell out.