I was ridiculously excited to see my daughter Christmas Eve morning but not twenty minutes after she walked in the door, we got a phone call about a death in the family. Someone who was a pretty big part of my childhood passed away in the early morning hours of the 24th. I've gone through a lot of emotions in the past 48 hours. My immediate reaction was that I was shocked but not surprised, especially given the rumored cause of death (we won't know for sure until the toxicology results come back in 6-8 weeks). Then I was upset because this person left behind four kids, two of whom are not yet 18 and whose futures are very much in doubt now. But since then I've just been...sad. I feel like I should be doing more, I think the whole family does, but there's nothing any of us can do. It's put a big cloud over the festivities. We had plans to watch Christmas movies and specials all evening and night with the kids on Christmas Eve, which we did and it was oddly therapeutic for everyone. I don't think any of us felt like talking so the movies provided a much needed escape from the swirl of emotions we all felt. It kinda doesn't feel real and I'm half thinking I'll wake up tomorrow and it'll all have been some bad dream.
This one hurts. A lot more than I initially thought it would. This person was hardly perfect and I don't know that she ever really did her best with the hand she'd been dealt but I can remember feeling some kind of weird admiration for her recklessness when I was a kid. There was some kind of safety I felt with her and I didn't realize until she was gone that the time we spent together probably had a larger effect on me than I would like to admit. I've had so many people (particularly girlfriends) tell me that I have some kind of 'reckless safety' about me. They never know what to expect next but for some reason they're still able to just trust whatever is going to happen. I never understood if that was a good or bad thing and they didn't seem to know either. This person had that same air about them and I probably learned part of this behavior from being in such close quarters with her at a fairly young age. It definitely makes life interesting, I'll say that much.
To tell you the truth I was half-expecting something bad to happen soon, not this month but in January, which tends to be a bad month for my family for some reason. I'm now hoping that 2011 kicks off with a whimper rather than a bang. It's interesting though...I don't remember my reaction to being told my girlfriend had passed (either time I was told, actually) but I remember my immediate reaction to hearing of my father's death as being no feeling at all. I literally went blank for ten minutes. My gut reaction to this latest loss was just this tremendous wave of sadness that I haven't been able to shake at all. I'll admit part of that is because of the uncertainty about the kids left behind. But I think so much more of it is just my being...for lack of a better description, majorly bummed out about her not being here anymore. Always in spirit obviously but that's of little comfort right now. I haven't been this gutted in a long time.
