Dead Zone...

May is a dead month. 

Not that there isn't anything happening, but that we have a lot of death associated with May. 

Today is the anniversary of my father's birthday. Birth dates of those that are no longer living are always big reminder days. Normally it's a celebration of their life, right? Well the date still comes even when they are gone. Now it's still a reminder of their life. Just past tense. 

Mother's Day just passed. Neither Brent nor I have living mothers anymore so it's always that reminder. And for us it's a really tricky one. Mother's Day 2020 was the last time we spoke to Brent's mother. Working backwards from her phone records today or tomorrow would have been the first day she didn't feel well. She progressed from "I don't feel well" to death in 10 days. And never during that stretch did we even have any idea she was sick, that she had caught Covid. It still does my head in a bit.

Twenty twenty was a shit May all around. We not only lost Ann but two friends as well. One to addiction and one to...well...I still don't know. I assume it was Covid matched with the ravages of alcohol. But I'm not actually sure. Nobody said and I felt like if they didn't want to tell me then that was their business. Either way it didn't matter. He was gone. 

Three people in three weeks. 

Then adding in the aforementioned birthdate and Mother's Day and the icing on the top, Brent's parent's anniversary is the end of the month as well. So another celebratory date with no one left to celebrate it. 

It's all very melancholy sounding, I realize, but I'm not writing this because I'm overly sad right now. It's just the reality of the world. 

Brent asked me the other day if there was another reunion coming, what years did we do those. I really wasn't sure. And I told him I didn't think we were planning on going to another one anyway so I hadn't kept track. It led to the conversation about who we would want to catch up with that never shows up to those things. And we talked about how the In Memorium table went from a few shocking names at the first reunion to a lot more gone to soons at the last one and how each reunion that would be a larger number and it would be more and more expected. It wouldn't be that shock moment of how young they were.

Kind of like how my early onset arthritis turned into perfectly age appropriate arthritis a few years ago. Same disease, but now the doctor's aren't shocked by it. 

A mutual friend of one of the May 2020 losses posted a video that reminded him of them today. We talked a little about it and he said that as we age more and more losses pile up. And I thought how odd it was that this was the same conversation that Brent and I had just had. But then I realized it's not odd at all. It's just what we know about life. 

When we were young it was the odd one out who knew someone who had died. Maybe a grandparent, but rarely someone your own age. There were a few of us who lost peers, but even then it was one or maybe two in the first few decades. As the years pass those numbers go up. Now at almost 55, my peer group doesn't have anyone who has not been touched by death. We are at the age where a lot of us are losing our parents, let alone our grandparents. 

It's the nature of life that it ends. And it's the nature of all life that when it ends you leave people behind. 

My wish for you today is that you are living a life that when it ends leaves the people around you sad and missing you, but so glad they had you for as long as they did. And I hope it's a very long time.