cerealjoe | Don't grumble, give a whistle (Reply)

There are fun things in life and then there are some that are not so fun. Last week one of those not so fun things that happened, my grandma passed away. Death is one of those things I try not to think about because worrying about death is worrying about something that is inevitable and even the best of us will go one day. Sure, there are people out there who hypothesise that my generation or the 90s-2000s babies generation will live for hundreds of years, but I hope that only happens when someone figures out how to live without getting sick/ageing and how not to have to work for up until about three years before you die. Can you imagine having to work for hundreds of years? Possibly doing the same job for all those years? That's enough to drive one insane.

But I digress. The event made me think a bit and look at my relationship to my inner feelings and I've come to some very startling, for me, conclusions. First of all, the one that shocked me most was that I felt no inclination to go to the funeral. I was fine with flying in and being there in general, but actually just the idea of going to the funeral (and worse, seeing the body) made me very uncomfortable. The main reason being that currently my last memory of my grandma is that of my last visit and I didn't want it to be replaced by a memory associated with her dead body. It's not the first time I notice that I try to avoid associating bad memories with events or people and if I do have memories like that, I usually start feeling very uncomfortable when asked to bring them back up.

The second thing that felt rather strange was the fact that in the end what upset me most wasn't the death itself, it was the fact that people I cherish a lot were suffering because of it. Perhaps trying to put everything into perspective and trying to be rational and practical about everything is my way of dealing with things.

Rereading the whole thing above makes me think that I sound a bit cold-hearted. Oh well, as I said, that's probably how I try to keep everything together.

I actually tried finding a photo or two of my grandma to post, I know must have some in the old scanned folder or maybe in the blackhole known as "photo-archives" (photos go there after being on the harddrive for more than a year and then are never heard of again, it's a scary place I rarely venture into)... but I can't find any right now... so here is a funky photo of mini!me (it seems I haven't posted anything under that tag in over a year!)