Chrisonomicon

Thursday, April 3, 2003

Mike's grandfather passed away the day before yesterday. One minute he'd been working on a late night crossword puzzle with the wife, the next, flat on the table. If you're gonna go, that's the way to do it -- a quiet evening with someone you love, no warning, five letter word, "... Becomes [Meryl Streep]," but it doesn't matter because the mortal coil of crosswords and war and just living has been unshuffled. Yes, that's the way to go. So Mike left this morning to fly out for the funeral tomorrow, and it already feels strange being the one left to hold the home front when I'd been the one departing for faraway places the past four weeks (but ain't it true that absence makes the heart grow fonder, if not completely obsessive?).

Additionally, my brother has been sick, prompting a worried phone call from dad last night. I kept imagining Derek passing suddenly from a mystery illness sometime in the night, none of his family near, and I made frantic calls to both him and mom to check in and ensure that death was indeed too busy in Virginia or Iraq to make a Colorado house call. He called this morning to reassure me that he was alive and revived. I still felt compelled, however, to drop everything and drive up to check in on him. Life would deflate, the oxygen of meaning and value escaping through the rift that would remain after he... I was forced to endure that thought for a while, as Mike prepared for his trip and the war raged and death seemed to surround everything.

But I am not afraid of death, especially not my own death. I'm simply afraid of life in the permanent absence of those I love, an absence that eschews fondness.