The Process

I've noticed recently that people in my sphere of relationship-ivity seem to be passing away at an alarming rate.  I suppose it was inevitable that as I aged, the number of people that I know or have known would increase. There will be months with no activity and then poof, a posse of people will pass. In fact just this past month, a couple of relatives passed away, several child hood friends lost one of their parents, and one high school friend lost his battle with cancer.

Statistically, I guess this all makes sense, since there is a mean, median, and mode to the life span distribution. In addition to that, most of the people I associate with are around the same age as me, so their parents and relatives age would be arranged in a like distribution. Probably the reason that we of the AARP generation read the daily obituary column as if it were a horoscope.

All of this analytical crap is not very consoling, and is probably just the way my mind deals with loss. Searching for the reason that things happen the way they do is a part of human nature. We all deal with this end of life question differently, with acceptance being the most difficult step in the Kubler-Ross model of psychobabble bologna. Personally, I tend to accept the death of my mortal body as a part of life. It is a terminal condition for which there is no cure.

Recently I had some dealings with hospice. Now don't get me wrong, these folks were like angels and made the "process" far more palatable, but it did seem to be a little weird. Hospice calls it a "process" and walks you through the "process" so that you are not surprised when the "process" goes to completion.

I suppose that I am just a dude in the early stages of "the process", but have relatively minor symptoms such as graying hair and aching lower back. As old number 7 once said "If I knew I was going to live this long, I'd have taken better care of myself."

And they laughed the laugh of the damned.

All content copyright of Christopher Hammond