Fragile

 I'm working full time at the moment, which is good for me and necessary but it makes me feel like I have very little time for blogging. Maybe it's more a matter of time management than hours in the day. I don't know. I miss you and I know I have thought of a number of topics and forgotten them again. Frustrating.

This evening I watched the livestreamed funeral of a man who was once vaguely in my orbit. I mostly think of him as the brother of a school friend, Cath. Chris was in my brother's year at school. The family lived a couple of blocks away from us. 

When my first child was born, Chris came with my brother to see me in hospital. I remember them, two 20 year olds, commenting on the size of my newborn's balls.

Recently Cath made a non-specific facebook post about heart break and not having really been in touch for 30 years, I watched silently. It became obvious as I watched the funeral that Chris took his own life.

Soon after watching the funeral, a facebook post came up about the death of a church pastor in Queensland. The guy's name was unusual and a girl I had known in high school had married a man with the same name. A quick google revealed that he was, in fact, the husband of the girl I knew and he, too, took his own life. 

These events are distant from me because the people haven't been in my life for so long but in degrees of separation, they are incredibly close. Both men died within a month of each other.

I can't even describe why I am writing about it because it doesn't affect me. 

But it does.

Last week I sat opposite an 85 year old who tearfully told me "I promised my sister I would never put her in aged care" and I responded with something I say quite often "Most people eventually become too old to properly care for themselves and if they don't end up in aged care it is usually because something tragic happens"

I started saying it as an attempt at comforting people but now I am seeing just how brutally true it is.