I've been to two funerals in the past two months.
Two men in their golden years who had children and grandchildren and the will to keep on living. Until their bodies acted against them, that is, and sickness ravaged their mortality away. Both men left legacies of what most would consider a good, middle-class life: regular church-goers with families who loved them, stable careers and reputable hobbies. Friends gathered and celebrated both men; friends who mourned their passing in different, but not really so different, ways. Tears of sadness for their lost friends, but mostly, I imagine, for themselves.
It's a humbling affair, attending a funeral. For this action puts one much closer to the realities of mortality than I'd wager most of us like to get on any given day. Closer than a stone's throw--funerals are almost a tap on the shoulder.
Tap, tap.
Tick Tock.
Life is fleeting. We really don't have all that long here, do we?
So when I go to work after the funeral, and meet a young man who cannot even legally go into a bar and order a drink to drown his sorrows--meet a young man who has twice attempted to end his life in the past two weeks?
Well, cerebral knowledge, compassion, social worker training and empathy get tossed out the window.
I wanted to wring his neck.
The irony escapes me not. ->
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Posted
16 May 2009 3:01 AM
by
Trench Warfare
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