Eva, a very sweet, beautiful girl I knew, a talented writer, who shared the Special Events Chair at my writers' group, has died aged 31 of cancer. I am still reeling. I knew she was ill, but not that ill. In fact, last time we spoke she thought she was improving and was looking forward to returning to work.
When this happens so unfairly to someone who had her whole life ahead of her, it doesn't half make you think how bloody lucky you are to have survived so far. My father's words ring in my ears: "When you get to my age, my dear, every day's a bonus." He was 84 when he said that and he lived another 700 or so days.
When someone dies, you are faced with a ghastly decision: do you erase them from your address book? Delete them from your phone? This morning, I deleted my friend's number from my cellphone and her email address from my computer's contacts list. I felt terrible as I did it, as if I were denying her existence, wiping her from history, even though it was only my phone and my computer's history. I still can't bring myself to delete my great friend Barbara who died in July last year. She lives on in my address book and in my Birthday Book, too, where there are at least ten undeleted people who are no longer with us.
Spookily, five of them are Pisceans like me, which seems rather significant and very worrying. It would be interesting to conduct a survey to see if people born under certain signs live longer than others. Or maybe I would rather not know. Perhaps the Pisces motto should be, 'live fast, die young'; in which case, being way past youth, it's high time I did a bit of high living.
3 comments:
I'm so sorry about your friend, Hydra. It really does seem unfair when someone really young dies. I remember going to the funerals of 2 of a Welsh friend's sons. (Both died of congenital liver defects. The first at 14 months' old and the second at 8-years-old.) I remember thinking how tiny the coffins were and feeling so sad that neither little boy had really been given the chance to experience life.
From what I know about astrology, Capricorns are said to live the longest, Aries are most likely to die through stress, overwork or daredevil accidents (but Capricorns only have about 33 days more than Aries in a full life ). Pisceans are one of the least likely signs to die in a daredevil accident or to commit suicide. But that was just a short overview done in China. I don't know how relevant it is to the Western world or how scientific the survey was.
Also, I know exactly what you mean about deleting departed friends and loved ones from address books, birthday books, cell 'phones etc. It's not happened to me re the cell 'phone yet, but I gently place a sticky label over the spaces in the address book and I leave them on the birthday list, adding the date of death.
I never thought of adding the date of death. Wish I'd done it now. But really, apart from my parents, I'd rather think of them on their birthday, then review their whole life in my head. That's dreadful about your friend's sons. It's strange to think that if I hadn't has my miscarriage, I'd have a 17 year old son now. But to lose one you've actually given birth to and brought up and got to know must be unbearable.
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