Meandering # 19

I wasn’t expecting to feel this way at this point in my life. I can distinctly remember my mother having phone conversations with her mother that were largely about this Aunt being sick or that friend dying. It seemed like that was the only communication my mother and her mother had on a regular basis. But I am 51 years old. My friends are not supposed to be sick or dying. And yet they are.
What do you do with the information? What do you do when one out of three people you know are having a bad go of things? My reaction is to become more tired and earth-weary. I know it is not me that is going through the experience, but I worry. I worry that my wife could become ill or my best friend. I worry that I could become ill or slip on the sidewalk and have a brain embolism.

Ridiculous notions usually--but because of the circumstances of others, how farfetched am I being? I don’t want to become one of those people who become hyper-cautious because they are afraid that they will buy the farm somehow, some way. Yet, I find myself going back and forth between ignoring the woes of others and checking my own pulse.

More ridiculous is the fact that most people I know are alive and well and aging appropriately. How can I choose to worry so much over the one in three when two out of three are doing so well? Maybe it is a six o’clock news mentality that has crept into my brain and cannot cope with happiness while “your dog may be an AIDS carrier” is fresh on my mind.
I am beginning to understand why people become hermits. At least when you divorce yourself from the world, the only woes you have to deal with are your own. Of course that empathy vaporizes rapidly when you consider that some hermits write manifestos and send out letter bombs.

Am I fated to feel the gravity of lives falling apart around me to the point that I too end up stiff and horizontal? Or is it possible that I will become so inoculated by other people’s bad news that I will barely look up from my dinner when I hear my wife offering condolences over the phone. Maybe what will happen is that I will finally begin to appreciate the finality of this life and enjoy my time more than I do. I hope I do. If not, I hope that my friends and loved ones will be more respectful of my need to have them around for a while longer.