Death

Ted Kennedy passed away last night. As I posted on Facebook, I'll never understand why death affects me the way it does. Or maybe I DO understand and don't want to face it.

I know everyone expects me to post funny or absurd things, but today I'm not feeling funny.

Death affects everyone differently. For me, death started slapping me in the face when I was 11. My two sisters and I were waiting for the school bus when a car slid on black ice and hit us. I was thrown across the street into our front yard, and the car landed on top of my sister Kathy Jo, who was 8 and my sister Lisa, who was 13. Kathy Jo had almost every bone in her body broken, and she didn't make it. My family changed after that day. My father started drinking heavily. My mother relied upon her Bible and Church. My sister Lisa became a totally different, unhappy person. I became.....morbid. negative. pessimistic. I hid it very well in my "class clown" facade.

When I was 22, my nephew Dylan, age 9 months, passed away. I NEVER AGAIN want to attend a funeral with a tiny little casket like Dylan's.

When I was 24, my good friend Jill was murdered by her estranged husband. He shot her three times in her apartment, and when she jumped through the second story window and was laying on the ground, shot her twice more. He then left with their four year old daughter, who had witnessed everything. August 20th was the 17th anniversary of Jill's death.

When I was 25, my father went in for a routine leg operation and had a massive heart attack. His death affected me as I never thought it would. We never had a close relationship. I was the open book daughter who said whatever she felt, and I never pretended that he was anything more than an alcoholic. Of course, six months prior to his death, he had stopped drinking and smoking and we had begun to patch up our very rough relationship. Regrets stink.

When I was 36, my husband's brother was found dead of a drug overdose. He was days away from turning 36. A year later, Grampa Vince (Mark's Grandfather and the only Grandfather I had ever known. Vince walked me down the aisle in 2003) passed away. As we flew out to attend his funeral, Mark and I were suspicious that, for the first time in my 17 years of trying, I had conceived. The day we returned home from the funeral, I had a beta done, and was, indeed pregnant.

January 4, 2006, at 14 weeks 2 days, we lost our son Daniel. I honestly didn't think I was going to survive this death. Mark and I got through it together, and conceived again in July of 2006....only to lose that baby at about 7 weeks. Even though I'm 41, we're talking about trying again. It's sad that I can honestly say, the second miscarriage didn't affect me as losing Daniel did.

And so, today, when I woke to the news that Ted Kennedy had passed away....I am affected the same way. I think of all I've lost. How cynical I've become. How I still have hope, God knows why. My husband Mark has saved my life, and my sanity, over and over again.

Okay. I have to go post something funny on Facebook now.