As my teenager prepares to attend a service for yet another
friend’s deceased parent, it hits me that my children have dealt with a lot of
death in their short lives. Much
more than I did in my youth. And
it makes me wonder whether I was just protected (I was) or have there been more
untimely demises. I think the
latter.
It is true that my parents prevented me from attending
funerals as a child and I had to argue to go to those I did. But I believe there were fewer. I just counted . . . I recall the
neighborhood girl who lost her mother to breast cancer, a playmate whose
somewhat older father passed away, a popular student/brother hit by a car and a
teammate’s father who died of a sudden heart attack. Perhaps there were others and again I was shielded. But in those years, divorce seemed much
more prevalent . . . death of a different kind.
My children, on the other hand, are quite aware that
children lose parents. By age six,
my eldest knew a boy whose father (my dear friend) died suddenly. In elementary school, my elder two had
classmates whose father perished in 9/11.
A horrific accident on
vacation claimed the mother of one large family, among others. Another father drowned on vacation. Four years ago, four more parents died. Even my 11 year old knows two families
who lost moms to cancer.
This post—9/11 era, as I call it, is filled with angst, international turmoil and multiple mass
domestic shootings. I
suspect that my boys still believe in the natural order of life and death and, if asked,
would expect my parents to predecease me. But I also guess that they would not be as shocked as
I, if it did not happen that way.
And so, matter-of-factly, my son readies for another
memorial. He needs to support a friend.
I, however, grieve for this boy whose mother I never met and for my
son’s loss of innocence. I also
wonder if and how I could have protected him.
