The Sun Will Come Out Next Week

I have decided that my sad, ponderous, navel-gazing blog entries will end next week. Come this time next Saturday, I will be outraged, outrageous, funny (sometimes), weird, providing too much information, and otherwise being my usual inappropriate self on my blog.

As soon as Aunt R is buried (finally) tomorrow, my dear friend’s 53 year-old brother is buried on Monday and we commemorate Mom’s TENTH Yahrzeit on Friday, I believe that the pall will lift.  And, maybe, I will entitle my entry next Saturday, “The Day After a Fortnight of Three Funerals, a Brain Injury, and No Weddings”.

Nothing on that day will make Dad healthy or sane again, or reverse Uncle L’s precipitous decline since Aunt R’s death on Christmas Day, but there will be, G-d willing, a respite from seemingly endless death and destruction and chaos.

I am still learning this hard lesson of life:  as I get older, I will lose people — sometimes a few at a time — and still I must balance these gut-wrenching events with laughter, silliness and irreverence.   (And, in fact, there have been some very comical moments during these trying times that can only be told after the passage of time.)

But, learn, I must and I will.  Because that is the only way I can survive and see the beauty and fun and happiness in my life (for which I am eternally grateful).  Otherwise, the pain will consume me, and dim the lights in my eyes and estrange my friends and family.

And then, I will have only succeeded in adding another casualty to the list of those loved ones who are dead or dying: ME.