...but for the past week or so death and dying have been on my mind quite a lot. Not my death or my dying, please note, and I fervently hope and trust my own death is still quite some time in the future. No, I've been reminded by the calendar of the deaths of several people in my life.
On September 26th I saw a post on Facebook about the funeral the day before of a friend of ours for more than 45 years from a former church, with whom we had lost touch.
On September 27 I remembered that in 2018 our 53-year-old niece was found dead on the floor of her bedroom by her widiwed mother about an hour after midnight. Our niece had recently separated from her third husband and moved with Simone, her German Shepherd dog, into her mother's home. Simone, who always slept in the same room as our niece, had come into the mother's bedroom and awakened her.
On September 28 I remembered that in 2015 Mrs.RWP's 84-year-old brother died after having been placed on "at-home hospice" with visiting nurses for about a month. He was the father of the niece mentioned earlier and it was his death that made a widoe of his wife, also mentioned earlier, to whom he had been married for 64 years. She herself died in bospice in November 2020 during the pandemic.
October 1st would have been the birthday of the niece that I mentioned above who died five years ago a few days before her 54th birthday.
It occurred to me on October 2nd that the day was the birthday of my youngest step-brother who died of a massive heart attack at the age of 54 in 1996.
Also on October 2nd, our oldest son called to let us know that his father-in-law, a retired physician, had died peacefully in his sleep during the pre-dawn hours. His wife called 911 when she discovered that he was not breathing. He was 87 years old.br>
October 4th is a day I always remember because it marks the anniversary of the day my mother died in 1957. She fought cancer for eight years before succumbing.
I guess I have reached the stage in life when deathdays are more common than birthdays. They occur with increasing frequency; at least it seemed so this week. There have been a whole slew of them.
That's a lot of anniversaries in a short time! A sad month for you.
ReplyDeleteI bought three sympathy cards yesterday and my daughter said we only know of two deaths. I said more will come. Today there was another.
God bless you
Death takes up too much of our waking moments, whether we will or no. Sobering.
ReplyDeleteWell I sincerely hope you are here writing about more cheery subjects for many moons to come.
ReplyDeleteI know that I have noticed a lot more celebrity deaths in the last couple of years. And they mean little to me. I guess looking back to the past and forward to our demise is what we do as we gain more years. You have experienced a rough period. I am sorry.
ReplyDeleteSo much to unpack here. My first thought was that your mother must have been so young when she died! My condolences for I'm sure it still hurts. And so sorry about your niece. But what a precious dog Simone was, to come and wake up the mother. I too sometimes reflect on all the passings. My father died on September 13th, 1968 (and yes it was a Friday) in a plane crash, one month shy of his 38th birthday. He was a pilot, and he and his pilot buddy, flying a smaller corporate jet, encountered wake turbulence of a much larger plane and their aircraft broke up mid-air. My good friend and college roommate Susan died of cancer at age 53 on the same day Steve Jobs died: October 5, 2011. So many friends and relatives now gone. TG told me recently that half the people born in 1942 are now dead. A useless statistic, but still it makes you think. Happy Tuesday xoxo
ReplyDelete