A few months before covid, a little girl from my kid's school died of cancer. I went to the funeral and felt sadder than ever, despite not knowing the family. It felt so awkward shaking hands with the father at the wake. I was imagining my own kids dying.
Around this time, I also learned of the death of some schoolmates, kids that I knew growing up but wasn't close with. A suicide and two murdered, seemed quite unlikely but it happened.
This turned out to be the prelude to a number of deaths in my family.
My uncle got a brain tumor. I flew to the bay area to see him for the last time. It seemed bad, but he could still walk.
My father passed away, slowly and suddenly. He'd been in and out of hospital with "the everything": COPD, IHD, diabetes, just everything that happens to you when you don't watch what you eat and don't exercise. It was never going to end well, but it also doesn't have to end at any particular visit to the hospital. I literally have a photo of the last thing he ate, which turned out to be the thing that killed him.
A few months later, the family chat lit up. I have this massive set of cousins, and when something happens they write. I started reading the "With great sadness..." message, thinking this will be uncle having passed. I screamed. It wasn't my uncle. It was my 36 year old cousin. He died of a heart attack overnight. We ended up doing the funeral on zoom. I still remember the last shot of him in the coffin, he looked like me, same haircut (bald) and same face.
Not long after, my mom's sister phoned her. She wanted to cheer her up by having her come visit. She'd been locked up in the flat since the lockdown, but now things were easing. She went to see her sister and they both caught the virus. It's weird when someone goes to hospital with covid. To start with, chances are you just need some oxygen and then you'll get better. That seemed to be the case, but they kept her there a bit because they weren't sure. Then they put her in intensive. At this stage, there's a significant chance of dying, but probably not huge. Then they put her on a ventilator, where I think it's a coin toss. Then she flipped tails.
I talked to a grief guy, which I think helped. He'd sort of seen it all before, in terms of how your relationship with your loved ones might have been. It's also useful to remember the highs and lows. I've been lucky, it's mostly been positive, can't really think of anything terrible in my childhood.
Several friends lost a parent in the months after my mom passed. It was good to be able to talk them through things. Both on a practical level ("this is how you do a funeral, this is how you do the paperwork"), but also on an emotional level, particularly reliving memories about the person. We've all met the parents of our friends and like our own parents you more or less assume they'll be around forever, until they aren't.
Man that's a rough period for you. I've gone through similar, the deaths tend to cluster. My dad was a pretty weird guy but he had some interesting insights, and one of them was "the only real sign that you get older is how often you have to wear black, and then one day they'll be wearing black for you, but don't let it get you down, it is the reason to live as if it really matters". At 9 I didn't really know what to do with that information but now that I'm 57 it rings quite true.
Around this time, I also learned of the death of some schoolmates, kids that I knew growing up but wasn't close with. A suicide and two murdered, seemed quite unlikely but it happened.
This turned out to be the prelude to a number of deaths in my family.
My uncle got a brain tumor. I flew to the bay area to see him for the last time. It seemed bad, but he could still walk.
My father passed away, slowly and suddenly. He'd been in and out of hospital with "the everything": COPD, IHD, diabetes, just everything that happens to you when you don't watch what you eat and don't exercise. It was never going to end well, but it also doesn't have to end at any particular visit to the hospital. I literally have a photo of the last thing he ate, which turned out to be the thing that killed him.
A few months later, the family chat lit up. I have this massive set of cousins, and when something happens they write. I started reading the "With great sadness..." message, thinking this will be uncle having passed. I screamed. It wasn't my uncle. It was my 36 year old cousin. He died of a heart attack overnight. We ended up doing the funeral on zoom. I still remember the last shot of him in the coffin, he looked like me, same haircut (bald) and same face.
Not long after, my mom's sister phoned her. She wanted to cheer her up by having her come visit. She'd been locked up in the flat since the lockdown, but now things were easing. She went to see her sister and they both caught the virus. It's weird when someone goes to hospital with covid. To start with, chances are you just need some oxygen and then you'll get better. That seemed to be the case, but they kept her there a bit because they weren't sure. Then they put her in intensive. At this stage, there's a significant chance of dying, but probably not huge. Then they put her on a ventilator, where I think it's a coin toss. Then she flipped tails.
I talked to a grief guy, which I think helped. He'd sort of seen it all before, in terms of how your relationship with your loved ones might have been. It's also useful to remember the highs and lows. I've been lucky, it's mostly been positive, can't really think of anything terrible in my childhood.
Several friends lost a parent in the months after my mom passed. It was good to be able to talk them through things. Both on a practical level ("this is how you do a funeral, this is how you do the paperwork"), but also on an emotional level, particularly reliving memories about the person. We've all met the parents of our friends and like our own parents you more or less assume they'll be around forever, until they aren't.