I hate not having my laptop at home because I can’t write whenever the inclination strikes. Like now. I have something in my brain that I need to commit to the ether, and I have no medium.
(So, I’m on my phone. For real.)
Anyway. It occurred to me after I wrote that last post that it could have seemed insensitive, the suggestion that another kind of close death is different than the one I experienced.
But that’s really all I meant – that it’s different. That being a child and losing someone is necessarily different than being an adult, even with the same experience. It stunts you in ways. It leaves you an 11-year-old kid, forever, in the ways that you anticipate the inevitable deaths of the people you love. That losing a parent leaves you feeling disconnected from the human condition. That suicide leaves you with all these questions and useless extrapolations and what-ifs. And so on.
This is not to say that mine was more difficult or worse or more painful than any other individual’s experience of death. I’m not saying that losing a parent, sibling, friend is easier as an adult, or that losing a certain kind of relationship trumps losing another kind of relationship. It’s just that there are all these factors, you know, with my dad’s death, that I’ve felt my whole life have isolated me from almost everyone I’ve ever met.
That’s all.
Carry on, fuzzballs.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I totally get it, and I didn’t think it was insensitive in the least.
I totally understand- I would think death of a parent at a young age, suddenly is way different than the death of one due to old age, etc… just the same as miscarriage is different than stillbirth is different than the loss of an infant.