💾 Archived View for tilde.club › ~winter › gemlog › 2024 › 10-20.gmi captured on 2024-12-17 at 11:09:46. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
I was lucky I guess to experience so little death for much of my life. My granddad died when I was 10, but it didn't hit me. I didn't know him - didn't remember him, having travelled to England a couple of times when I was a baby, and then a toddler, these memories gone the way such memories are.
Then a long gap, decades. Then my dog, then my other grandfather, complications around pneumonia and emphysema. A parade of friends: one of the guys from my teenage D&D group, cause unknown; a childhood friend, his congenital bum heart killing him in his sleep. Another friend, in a motorcycle accident. And then, last night, word from my mother, via one of my uncles, that one of my cousins has suddenly passed away.
He was the oldest of all of us, more than a decade older than me. To be in your fifties is no longer young, but I can't help but feel it isn't old, either. Still firmly in midlife. I had hoped to get out again next summer, see the whole family. I still do, though now I'm sad I won't get to see him again.
He was a tall guy, paunchy in that skinny way, angular, a little awkward. A nice guy, though. Devoted to his partner, who today must be devastated. I need to call my family, figure out flowers and cards, whether I'll be requested at the funeral, transatlantic flights being, well, not cheap.
I told my partner last night that I'm outliving too many people. That you expect to outlive grandparents, parents, but not friends, siblings, cousins. You expect your generation to age with you.
Until they don't. I need to call my parents. I need to think about potentially buying a new suit, my current one tailored to a younger, slimmer version of myself. I should cut my hair. There's so much about this I don't know how to do. I never said goodbye to my most-recent grandfather, his death occurring at the height of the pandemic. How do I do this? How do I do any of this? Get through today, and then tomorrow.