i’m not even going to try to organize these thoughts tonight. they’re all over the place.
a girlfriend recently shared with me that her teenage daughter who had been dealing with some depression issues (exacerbated, no doubt, by this covid situation) had accidentally overdosed. my friend administered first aid until the ambulance arrived, and but for the quick actions of that emergency medical team, her daughter might not have made it. (it’s now months later and there’s been some very good progress made in addressing the underlying issues.)
earlier last year, C’s high school friend also accidentally overdosed on his 17th birthday after a quarantined celebratory dinner with the family at home. he didn’t make it. just like that *poof* gone.
and then just earlier this afternoon, just 1/2 hour up the road, 10 people lost their lives when a gunman started shooting at a grocery store in boulder. (just down down the street from one of the universities that C is considering attending in the fall.)
friends ask me if i want my kids to have kids of their own someday. like, wouldn’t it be fun to be a grandparent? and i keep thinking that just being a mother nearly breaks my heart. i feel so hyper aware of how fragile this all is. like how could i ever possibly continue on if anything ever happened to them? and as ______ as the world is today, how can i possibly keep them safe?
around the time when all my friends were first getting married and having kids, my friend K admitted to me that as much as she had always wanted kids growing up, now that she was at that stage when it seemed expected of her, she wasn’t sure if she could do it. she explained that her dog’s recent (unexpected) passing had nearly destroyed her. it wasn’t just that the dog died – pets do that. it was that the dog died as a direct result of her actions. she had given the dog a rope chew toy to worry on, unaware that the dog was slowly ingesting the chewed off pieces. eventually the dog’s digestive track was so tangled in rope and fibers that it was unable to process it all. the way the vet (unnecessarily, in my view) explained it to her, it was the dog’s intestines had been essentially put through a meat grinder. it was painful and the dog, who, up till then, had been the love of her life, died. how could she risk going through that again with kids?
at the time, i felt pretty confident in my response. it had something to do with the purpose of life being to feel things. to experience the profound love, even if that meant risking having to feel that profound loss as well.
an older employee at work who had married a younger single mother at least ten years ago, recently experienced the loss of his 20-something year old stepson. the son had some known medical conditions and was still living in the family home when he passed away unexpectedly. the older man, who had, no doubt by this point in his life experienced loss before, was destroyed. he would call to try and plan for work coverage while he was out, and was inconsolable. this was in the time before every call was a video call – but you could hear it in his voice. and when he finally, tentatively, came in to the office in person, you could see it in his face so clearly. so shell shocked. and he would describe the pain so openly – unable to expend any of the energy that one would typically need to artfully navigate these types of issues in socially acceptable (is there such a thing?) ways. “i don’t know how anyone ever gets over any of this…” he’d say. “it hurts so badly, so physically, i just can’t imagine ever being able to go on feeling like this…”
i’m so glad i have my children. i love them with all my heart and then some. and i wouldn’t change a thing. but having this kind of love opens you up to a vulnerability that seems less and less acknowledged by the world around us that demonstrates on a daily basis how it is losing its heart.
we don’t just need better gun control. we need saving. the soul, the heart, of our humanity is disappearing, and people seem at times just not to notice, and at other times to relish in that fact.
eleven bee 