DEATH OF FRIENDS

Without discussing the obvious, the sense of loss, the empathy of a vital life being snuffed out, the sympathy for a friend’s adult children who must now do without that last remaining parent, handle an estate, clean out a living space and all the tasks of sifting though the memorabilia of a parent’s lifetime, I am now focused on how such a loss impacts on my own life.

Many of my senior friends say they have no friends left as they have all died. For men, whose life expectancy is shorter, this seems to be even more a truth. My response is and will continue to be, “Make new and younger friends”.

Hospitalization gives one time to prepare for a loss; that a miracle probably will not happen, My brain did not want to think of the alternative or absence of my friend from my life. The movie of our many years of friendship played at super speed in my head. Gone were the days when she could walk in a museum, shop without one of those motorized carts (which not too many places offer), and ultimately our time together had gradually become less frequent.. It seemed that this must be Nature’s way of preparing people; an illness, debilitation, loss of mobility and then death…the permanent separator.

Many illnesses make the process of losing someone even longer, worse when the mind is altered so that the person is gone and only the body remains. Spared that, one sees the effects on our ebbing lives. We slow down, we learn less, we sleep through TV and become less interested in world events. Some lives become so limited from the paucity of new input, even phone conversations become tedious to more active minds and the intensity of the old intimacy and connectedness begins to fade.

People live as memories everafter. We relive the love, connectedness, fun things we did, laughter shared, things taught and learned, help offered and received, and so much more. Some of us move on and pick up our lives; sadly some seem unable to let the past go and stay in a place that no longer exists either for those we grieve or for ourselves.

HELPLESSNESS

Many events and situations in life leave one feeling helpless. Having a friend so critically ill that all you can do is send a message of caring and love through a relative is among the top on my frustration list. It is good that doctor's will try to place odds on someone's chance of survival, I guess, when they are good...not so when the odds of survival are around 25%! Helplessly one can only sit around and wait for better news.

The impotence felt is akin to what is raised within, listening to political analysts. I have to keep reminding myself how often they are wrong, though they sound so totally convinced of their own faulty wisdom. Negative campaigning works; negative campaigning doesn't work. The race card is being played; the race card is not being played. Being young and bright is a plus; being young and bright is a liability. Being old, physically a time bomb, but a hero for having survived being a prisoner of war for years makes you ready to be President; age, poor health, POW status does n ready one to be Commander in Chief. Not having been in the Armed Services disqualifies you to be Commander in Chief. (Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and GW Bush excepted, of course) Only those with sufficient ability to discriminate the hypocrisy have a fighting chance and that seems to be less than 50%.