Image via WikipediaI posted this post to my old blog, regarding a song by Joni Mitchell and the thoughts it inspired in me about growing older. Rather than bring it over, I'll just link to it, as it contains some relevant links.This is basically why I'm here.
I'm a middle-aged man, though considering the state of my physique, I'm probably more towards the end than the middle. So be it.
But I have young children, 12 and 16, which means that in dog years I really ought to be like Tony Soprano at the start of the series. He was I think 38, when Meadow and Anthony Jr. were about the ages of my kids.
So I ask yez, when you look at the life expectancy of a Mafia boss, and it seems better than yours, where does that leave you?
My thoughts are therefore somewhat bogged down in mortality. All the more because I lost a son.
I married first at 19, spare me your retrospective advice. Daniel was born on September 11, and in this post I explain how that wasn't a problem for long.
He died, terribly.
That's all I will ever say about it, but it informs everything I say. In the same way that a person with kids can never really get across to a person without kids what it's all about, so it is with loss. Those who know, know. Those who don't know, may it please your god that you never find out.
So that's me. There'll be stuff that appears not to match this profile. That's me, too.
Here's Joni singing the song that gave this blog its name:
I can't begin to imagine, because imagining is so fearful that I dare not. As for mortality, fuck it. You have to live until you get there, so innit.
ReplyDeleteFunny. I've been listening to this song constantly for the last three weeks. Also "Come in from the Cold," which I like even better.
ReplyDeleteI can't think about that, or even my own much ... though as it gets closer it doesn't seem as scary as it once did. Someone said to me, do you really want to open up the 300,000th issue of the NYT?
ReplyDeleteWe must remember to be thankful most days. The reminders are everywhere at every age, for ex my son had to retrieve his girlfriend the other night from the hospital where they take drunk drivers. My other son is this minute on a freeway hurtling away at eighty miles an hour at the mercy of some other driver that is neither him nor me. I don't know what we can do but remember to be thankful for what hasn't yet gone even worse.
ReplyDeleteMy parents dealt with the loss of an adult child three times, and I, on the periphery, dealt with the losses as well. Boom, the oldest. My beloved, admired, hero-worshipped eldest brother. A suicide. You don't think you can deal with it. Ever. Then boom again. The next oldest. The beautiful princesse and, later, hippie earth mother. Killed in a car crash by a drunk driver. Years later, boom again. The third oldest. The one closest to me. Not gone in an instant, like the others. Diagnosed with colon/liver cancer, he spent two-and-a-half years trying every which way to trick the Reaper. Perhaps there's a blessing in the long goodbye.
ReplyDeleteMore sorry than I can say about the loss of your son, Alan. I know how my siblings' deaths affected me but that was just a shadow of how they affected my parents. I hope I never have to deal with the loss of a child.