I love the movie About Time. It absolutely reduces me to a soggy, sobbing mess, EVERY time, but I'll pretty much never not watch it, still. There's a line in it. "The real troubles in your life will always be things that never crossed your worried mind." As an avid worrier, I can confirm that this is very, very true. Sure, I had a nascent worry about losing my Dad, but it honestly never occurred to me that he was going to die on that flight over the Atlantic.
And it's funny…grief is kind of similar. Times when you think things are going alone fine, when you think you're doing ok…WHAM! The carpet disappears and you're free-falling.
It's been two and a half years since my Dad died. And then some things happened.
Last week, my cousin lost her husband. He was 44. He was a wonderful, wonderful person. He took care of her and her daughter when she was a young, single mother, and became a great Dad and husband for them. Together, they went on to have two more children. They made a family together, and it really sucks that he is gone now. Death is a part of life, yes, but sometimes the TIMING of it is just flat out unfair.
So, perhaps, then, grief was on my mind already when I went to show my daughter a video of her as a baby, and subsequently stumbled across one of B jumping to my Dad in my sister's pool. It had been a long time since I'd heard his voice. And it caught me off guard. And as my Mom said a little while ago, "Grief sneaks up on you. It's like a kick to the back of the head." And it is.
It's a particular weakness of mine, when it comes to my Dad and B. They had a special bond. So, seeing that video hit that nerve even more squarely in light of that. Still, two and a half years later, I just hate that B lost his Papa. I hate it. I hate that it changed his world. I hate that it changed the WAY he sees the world as a whole. I hate that it will probably be the defining event of his childhood. It's not fair. And I know life isn't fair. But I don't have to like it.
But perhaps it is through this filter that Ben sees the world, that brought about his reaction when I told him about my cousin's husband's death, and his first thought was for their 7 year old son. This extremely empathetic boy of mine knows loss. And although that sucks, maybe it will bring about something good, somehow. Maybe. I hope so.
Sigh. Another not entirely coherent post here at MommyWriter.
