I'm not quite 40, yet lately -- and I'm talking about the past couple of years here -- I've been in a bit of a mid-life crisis. Life seems more and more temporal all the time. Faster and faster it goes. My mother assures me today that the feeling doesn't get any worse after 40. She didn't say that it would get better, but I'm okay with the idea that it won't get any worse.
I have an uncle who died today. He had one arm, the other lost to a potato picker. I have a vague memory, as a small child, of being warned when he first came around, that he was missing the arm. I think I was scared of him for about a second. I don't remember now. Looking back as an adult everyone was probably scared of him. He was going to marry my Aunt Lois, who hadn't really brought any other boyfriends around. He was a lot older than she. He had one arm. I remember them making each other laugh. Prior to that point I thought I was the only one who could make Lois laugh (probably due to the near spelling of our names Lois/Lisa). I thought it was a good thing for Lois to laugh.
This weekend a well like local man was killed in a head-on collision. I know (knew) both the victim and the 16 year old driver who ran into him. Michael in the permanence of youth apparently thought he could not wait for the truck in front of him. Now he knows that life is temporary too. So quickly both families changed forever. He should have waited. He knows that now.
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