A Lifetime Of Death?

Once upon a time, I wanted to be a writer, & I wrote a story called "Death" at the ripe age of what, 20?  22?  I don't remember it exactly, but the first line went something like, I don't know a lot of people who died.  Which at the time was true.  & strangely enough, it's still somewhat true.  Since the show this week is about death, I thought I'd take an inventory of people close to me who've died.

The short story mentioned a fictionalize version of my mother's boyfriend when I was growing up, a man named Ed.  I don't think I've talked about him around here much, but he was around from the time I was in third grade until I went off to college.  He died some time in my second year of school, although at that time, my mother & he were not seeing each other.  I wasn't what you'd call close to me, but I did spend a great deal of time with him when I was a teenager.  It's a long story.

In 1991, my father died, but we weren't close.  In the previous decade, I had lost my grandparents on my mother's side (my father's mother died when he was young; his father died the year I was born), but they lived in Germany & I saw them maybe twice in my life.  In this century, my mother lost her two siblings, my uncle & aunt, & although I saw them more than my grandparents, age & language separated us.  My aunt, though, was super cool, & I think the brief time I spent with her I liked her more than my mother.

As I wrote here, the big deaths in my life have been animals.  I lost my first cat Blue Boy to feline leukemia in 1999.  I lost Buster - who was raised by Blue Boy - in 2008, & wrote about him here.  George, the world's best beagle, died in 2012, & because I continue to surround myself with animals - there are eight in all now, not counting my wife & myself - I know there's more death & heartbreak in the future.

The hardest death recently, of course, was my oldest sister, who died last year from cancer.  I wrote about that here.  Coming back to Texas was hard because she is no longer here.  I would be spending lots of time with her if she were.

& that's it.  It may be that I'm not close to many people.  It might be that I'm not sure if someone I was once close to is alive or dead at this moment.  Or it may be that I have been exceedingly fortunate that death has so far spared me most of its future misery.