More sad things
Sep. 23rd, 2005 02:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ewein2412There is so much scary stuff going on right now in the world, so much suffering that my own woes seem very petty, and my taking-certain-things-for-granted has just been brought home in a concrete way: one of our next door neighbors died on Wednesday. He was my age, with a wife my age and two kids our kids' age (young; both under 10), and he died very suddenly of cancer after about a month's illness. His wife, who I am friendly with but not close to, has spent the last month nursing him. We knew something was up because her mother and sister had basically taken over getting dealing with all the kids' everyday activities (they both go to my kids' school), but we didn't actually find out what was going on until the day he died.
From the point of view of wife and mother, it is one of my top two Worst Case Scenarios. I feel so sorry for her, I said to Tim, and so sorry for those kids.
Tim answered, I feel sorry for him!
So right, too. He was only in his early 40s. One of my friends commented, "It's just the worst possible way it could have happened. It was sudden enough that it's a shock, but slow enough that they all had to face up to the fact that he was dying." They told their kids last week. It breaks my heart, it really breaks my heart, to think of those children going off to school and swimming and drama club every day for the last week knowing that their father wasn't going to live past the end of the month.
Why am I writing this here? I don't know. It was much better in my head before I put it into words.
"There is no safety, and there is no end. The dance is always danced above the hollow place, above the terrible abyss."
—Ursula K LeGuin, The Tombs of Atuan
From the point of view of wife and mother, it is one of my top two Worst Case Scenarios. I feel so sorry for her, I said to Tim, and so sorry for those kids.
Tim answered, I feel sorry for him!
So right, too. He was only in his early 40s. One of my friends commented, "It's just the worst possible way it could have happened. It was sudden enough that it's a shock, but slow enough that they all had to face up to the fact that he was dying." They told their kids last week. It breaks my heart, it really breaks my heart, to think of those children going off to school and swimming and drama club every day for the last week knowing that their father wasn't going to live past the end of the month.
Why am I writing this here? I don't know. It was much better in my head before I put it into words.
"There is no safety, and there is no end. The dance is always danced above the hollow place, above the terrible abyss."
—Ursula K LeGuin, The Tombs of Atuan