After my mother died this summer, I decided to chalk up 2017 as a loss. There was no way I was going to be able to turn this period of time into a good part of my life, and circumstances in the world seemed to confirm my attitude that this was not a good time.
But superstition makes me feel strangely guilty for the subsequent misfortunes to fall this year. I know that rationally, my surrender to the awfulness of 2017 has nothing to do with the events that occurred within it, but it almost seems like fate took my decision and then decided to pile on more.
I realize this is fairly solipsistic to imagine that these misfortunes are mine - I am in relatively good health (knock on wood) and am not under any serious financial strain. But I do have the distinct feeling that the world is falling apart around me.
A few weeks ago, my grandmother followed her daughter. My grandma was 94 (she had recently had her birthday) and so while I generally think most people would prefer living forever, if we are living in a world where we must accept aging and mortality as inevitablilites, then that seems like a non-tragic age to die.
But today I discovered that a dear friend of mine from college died last week. We had not kept in touch very well - even in this age of social media, one can lean on the crutch of just seeing an old friend's facebook posts rather than actually engaging with them actively. But she was a very special person to me nonetheless.
I'm still in shock about this, having only found out about an hour ago. Perhaps it is unwise to write this post now, but I'm feeling raw and putting my words on screen is an attempt at something therapeutic.
I went a very long time before anyone I knew died. I was thirteen when my grandfather died, and before that, death had been a pure, terrifying abstract. I knew that death could come for people of any age, but the general assumption that I've always lived by was the idea that I, and most people I knew, would make it to old age. That's the promise that we make by living in modern society, though it is one that is broken all the time.
I felt my mother was far too young to die at 67. As far as I was concerned, she was owed another thirty years. We're supposed to be progressing as a species, and so if I had two grandparents that made it into their 90s, then surely my parents should both live to be over 100. I'll still hold that hope for my father, but the ship has sailed on my mother.
But to see someone my age, a bright spark of cheer and kindness, who took me on in friendship despite all of my insecurities and anxieties, taken less than ten years after we graduated from college is a shock that fills me with a kind of scraping grief I can hardly articulate.
We didn't really have mutual friends, which means that I can't really talk to anyone about this in detail. I guess that's why I felt the need to make this post. I'm tossing my thoughts into the electronic aether.
