A little something about nothing

Reality of Getting Older

In addition to all the changes in my body, which continually reminds me of the effects of getting older, society is starting to show all the red flags as well.

Until last year I feel I must have had a rather sheltered life when it came to death. I grew up with the very rare occassional funeral to attend. Last September was my first family funeral as an adult. It was harder than I imagined, but with the support of family and friends we all made it through pretty well.

Since that time, I have lost another family member, a friend, and by the end of this week will have attended 5 additional funerals for relatives of friends. I have two this week alone. I realize death is a part of life; however, it seems to be surrounding me and I must admit it is a little scary.

The two this week are heart breaking, not that the others weren't, but the circumstances are so sad. The one I will be attending tonight is for an old co-worker's husband that was 47. Last year he went through two surgeries, one of which was a liver transplant. Everything went great...until recently. He has been in the hospital on a breathing machine and the doctors could not explain what was going wrong with him...he just continued to get worse. The worse part about it is my friend had to take her husband off the machine while he was fully alert. Awful!!!

The one I will be attending on Friday is for a friend of mine and Mark's who's mother passed on Sunday. I am not certain what the exact cause was, but I know she's been in and out of the hospital for the last two months. She was excessivley overweight, drank and smoked. He is only 26 and lived with his mother because he couldn't afford to live on his own. The reason they are waiting until Friday for the funeral is because they are hoping to raise enough money to pay for it...right now they have no money. Apparently she had an insurance policy that was approximately a year old, but were told it had a two year wait period on it; therefore, they will not receive any money from it.

I fully believe there is a reason for everything that happens and sometimes it takes years to see it, I just hope each of these families are able to find peace.