Ho Hum

I don't mean to end NaBloPoMo on a lame note, but I'm a little out of sorts today. We found out first thing this morning that a family friend died last night. He was diagnosed with cancer only a month or two ago, and we knew then that he may not have a long time to live. Nevertheless, I'm a little thrown off for a couple of reasons. For one, he wasn't "old." He was maybe a decade older than my parents. For another, he was the kind of person whose personality took up a whole room. He wasn't someone that I could easily imagine being ill or sick or weak or anything like that. And for finally, I've always had this idea that when people are diagnosed with some serious disease, they usually hang on for quite awhile after that. There's an awful lot that doctors can do to slow a natural decline and give people as much time as possible. When they said he may only have 3 months to live, I assumed that that must be a conservative estimate, that we'd all have plenty of time to become accustomed to the idea, an for him to get everything wrapped up. Obviously, I was terribly wrong, and so I was probably more shocked than I should have been when we got the news today.

Even though I'm well-aware that I'm still young and naive and so on and so forth, I'm always a little surprised when I learn something new about life, one of those indisputable truths that my elders probably already know well. Cliches like, "College is one of the best times of your life," and "There are plenty of fish in the sea." And now I have another one to add to it: People can and will die, whenever Fate decides, whether any of us are ready for it or not. How utterly ridiculous that truth looks when it's printed flatly on a computer screen, in impotent words that can't do it justice.

Thanks for allowing me this silly, overly dramatic moment. Tomorrow: back to frivolity!