Nearly every day, I scan through the obituaries.
Mostly, it's a professional thing. I tend to jump to the ones with the Star of David on them, checking my little community.
Sometimes things catch my eye.
Today, there was an obituary for an older person, asking for donations to be made to the Ronald McDonald House charities. That's not exceptionally common, so I kept reading. The other option for donations was a named foundation. My sense of morbid curiosity got to me, and I googled the name.
Based on what I can tell from the obituary, 38 years ago this person's niece died of leukemia. She was not yet 3 years old. And 38 years later, it still had impact on the family's handling of this person's death.
Thirty-eight years later.
It stretches so far into the future....it's almost my entire lifetime.
One of the reasons I haven't been writing lately is that I am actually paralyzed by the immensity, the weight, the magnitude....of that lifetime. I wonder, sometimes, how that can actually be real.
Our lives are fairly normal. Normal stuff happens. School, laundry, movies, new shoes....whatever makes us ordinary travelers in this world. The living kids are great. "Well-adjusted." Happy.
Sammy's life doesn't hang over us like a cloud. It really doesn't. His presence is everywhere, we talk about him all the time, but it's not in a Big Deep Dark Way. We live with him.
And yet....there's that lifetime. Stretching before me. Without him.
In 2015....Older
In 2014...It's Been 103 Days
In 2013....Buzz Cuts for Cancer (video....and omg)
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| just days before diagnosis at his Kindergarten graduation ceremony |
He'll always be with you.
ReplyDeleteI wanted to celebrate Purim, I wanted to dress up, to wear Sammy's heart on my sleeve
ReplyDeleteYou have been much on my mind lately for some reason. Specifically how very difficult it must have been for you to live day after day at the hospital with Sammy. And yet you never complained, not even when you broke your nose. You are an inspiration.
ReplyDeleteWe gave to the MACC fund when we lived in Fox Point and although we moved away in 2006, we resumed our gifts when we first found your blog. We will continue to do so as part of our annual giving.