I just found out that my next door neighbor died suddenly. She was about thirty-five and was, by vocation, a pet-sitter. Our pet-sitter, for one. And somebody else's pet-sitter, down the street, where she died, apparently suddenly and unexpectedly.
I keep looking over--there's her car, there's the fence, there's the rusty old shed that's been there for decades...This was someone who was useful in the community, who filled a needed niche and helped a number of elderly ladies. Someone to whom I could have been a better friend when she was a lonely kid.
I wonder how jaded it makes me, living with a husband who is taking a decade or two to die of an inexorably terminal condition. Am I more or less unsettled than someone who doesn't have the grim reaper penciled into her datebook under the vague heading to be continued...? Maybe I'm more stupefied than affected in any kind of a meaningful way. I just kind of look over and think oh...wow...shiznit.
Sometimes I wonder if it's even possible to get nearly through 5 decades of life and still find anything shocking or traumatizing, or do we all--after this much time--just look out the kitchen window and say to ourselves, "well, I wasn't expecting that one."
I don't think it's the same as being callous. I think I still register empathic pain, and I think I'll still reach out a hand if the obtusity of my mind permits me to notice a need. But, oh...wow...shiznit.
2 comments:
What did she die of?
Not known yet. Sudden and natural causes, it seems. Her mother died unexpectedly at around age 50, so perhaps a shared defect.
She was an isolated kid living with her grandparents when we bought our house. She kept the house when they died and grew to become a helper-of-all-sorts to the surrounding neighborhood...pet sitting, driving elderly people, etc...
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