Too close to home this time

"I suppose I do have one unembarrassed passion. I want to know how it feels to care about something passionately."
-Adaptation

While lost in thought driving this evening, I managed to notice three cars pass me at a stop light. In the evening light the drivers in each car reflected the faces of three women, all older than me; their faces were diffused but captured like photographs in different stages of ageing. They were alone in their vehicles.

At that moment I said to myself, women are by nature ill-fated (is that even a word?). We always outlive the men we choose. Men typcially have a shorter life span. I wondered as I waited for the light, if those women were widows.

The light changed, and my mind continued on the subject. Yeah, but we are survivors. We were built to outlast any trauma, any horror, any complication-- we must carry on the race. We can withstand the worst and will outlive our counterparts. This thought took me to my old residence. I stopped by to feed the last of the surviving pets--a female cat named Francis. Reuben was put down one week ago today.

After my dealings with Francis, I opted to visit Reuben in the backyard, a shallow grave was dug in a place I requested, hoping it would not be festooned with weeds come late fall. Unfortunately, it was gathering serious moss, and I bent down to pull the weeds from his final resting place.

His grave seemed bloated, as if his decaying body underneath had ballooned in size, and the only thing keeping him from scratching the surface were the heavy boulders placed on top to keep rodents away.

Much to my surprise, I wept and for a long time over his grave. It must have been a release of all thing that were buried with that cat and the dying relationship with one man..I don't know.

After I collected myself, I returned to the car, noticing my phone had a message.
It was rare for me to receive messages, and I chuckled to myself, finding it ironic that I left the phone for 10 minutes and, go figure, someone called.

It was my mom. Her voice was strange and distorted as she started. My immediate thought was that my great aunt of 86 was dead. I have been anticipating that call for a few months now. But instead, it WAS a death--only closer to home. My neighbor--our neighbor of 25+ years was dead. He was 67 years old.
My mother was sobbing on the line as I tried to make sense of the message, how did it what did it when did it, what about...I cannot believe it. Upon calling back, the only thing I recall is the choking, familial sound of my mother saying of Judy, the surviving widow, "... the hardest thing was saying goodbye to him..."

I think for my mom it was her first real jolt of mortality. And it scared the shit out of her.

Now, standing in my kitchen, I wait for pending autopsy news, funeral and wake announcements and consider how in the world I will soothe my parents as they recognize the fragility and fleeting-ness of their lives.

Life's lessons are hard. Glad the last few years have taught me coping mechanisims for the unimaginable because, it seems, that the unimaginable is here.