(no subject)
May. 11th, 2004 07:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cybermuleWell, today has been strange. My dad died a year ago, so that just seems to have put an odd spin on the day. Just as a point to note, this time last year, as far as I was concerned, he was still alive. I don't find out yet for another four days.
I seem to have handled it just fine, especially after giving myself a good psychological kick in the backside over the weekend. I think I did all my going to pieces last week. By Friday, I felt like a truck that had shed all its bits along the hard shoulder. You know when you see those massive strips of tyre on the side of the motorway, and you wonder what the fuck happened to the truck? Kind of like that.
The question that is going through my head is whether you really truly accept death at all? Do you lose someone, then spend the rest of your life secretly not being at all surprised if it turned out to have been a mistake? The tales that you think up seem less and less plausible as time goes by, but I'm wondering if you ever really know in your heart that they are gone.
Maybe the feeling is just me. I'm not looking for reassurance or comfort with that, I just sometimes wonder. To me, death is the big dark ugly kernel of reality that I mostly choose to ignore - I won't stare it in the eye. I'm not afraid of it, I just can't accept that the person is gone. Despite being an overly-fearful child, I guess I just never really thought about it, to be honest. Religious and spiritual things never really troubled me over-much, I barely even thought, in the way I would now describe thinking, until about 5 years ago.
Then suddenly it slammed me in the face, my own mortality by generational proxy, the fact that I could be dead in 20 years. Doesn't seem so long. And I was ill-prepared to cope with it on a personally relevant level. It had always happened to someone else.
I haven't really got any answers here, but I have spent the year noticing, for the first time, that I really have a lot of questions.
I seem to have handled it just fine, especially after giving myself a good psychological kick in the backside over the weekend. I think I did all my going to pieces last week. By Friday, I felt like a truck that had shed all its bits along the hard shoulder. You know when you see those massive strips of tyre on the side of the motorway, and you wonder what the fuck happened to the truck? Kind of like that.
The question that is going through my head is whether you really truly accept death at all? Do you lose someone, then spend the rest of your life secretly not being at all surprised if it turned out to have been a mistake? The tales that you think up seem less and less plausible as time goes by, but I'm wondering if you ever really know in your heart that they are gone.
Maybe the feeling is just me. I'm not looking for reassurance or comfort with that, I just sometimes wonder. To me, death is the big dark ugly kernel of reality that I mostly choose to ignore - I won't stare it in the eye. I'm not afraid of it, I just can't accept that the person is gone. Despite being an overly-fearful child, I guess I just never really thought about it, to be honest. Religious and spiritual things never really troubled me over-much, I barely even thought, in the way I would now describe thinking, until about 5 years ago.
Then suddenly it slammed me in the face, my own mortality by generational proxy, the fact that I could be dead in 20 years. Doesn't seem so long. And I was ill-prepared to cope with it on a personally relevant level. It had always happened to someone else.
I haven't really got any answers here, but I have spent the year noticing, for the first time, that I really have a lot of questions.
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no subject
Date: 2004-05-16 06:25 am (UTC)You could turn it around, you know, and ask why you do fear death?