by Edward Kennedy » 07/ 18/ 10 7:16 am
We had a windstorm here, just a minor one relative to the tornadoes you southern folk suffer, but I had three emergency calls yesterday and two of them are secured and to be completed tomorrow...the third call I went in and it was an elderly woman who had a branch partially sever and a small piece of it land on the edge of the neighbor's roof. He is a cantankerous whiner and she had been pestered by this idiot...I will not tell you what nationality he is...so since I did the call on the trail machine, I told her that I would sneak in this morning before anyone was awake, and cut the seciton back.
I was up at five and there at six and done in 45 minutes using a polesaw.
She will awaken, look out the back and feel happy...we are returning to do the major work Tuesday.
Anyway, on the drive home, went past a road down which a woman I know lived. I was thinking of Emily and your misfortunes relative.
This woman and her husband had two two older children, a boy and a girl. The girl was adorable and at age 18, with a boyfriend, wanted him to take her to a party but he declined, saying he had a test the next day and had to study. She decided to go with another guy...htere was alcohol and marijuana at the party...when she left with her escort, he was driving a small car and speeding and missed a turn coming into a berg of Kingston and hit a parked dump truck. He died at this gal, at the age of 18, pretty and vital, in her happy years was decapitated in the event.
A year later her older brother wa slaid to rest beside her when a car he was working under fell on him when the jack failed.
There are other codicils to the tragedies that plagued this couple I will not go into. I have already reiterated the story of Ken, a man who was married three times and lost all three of his wives. He finally gave up and took his leave form this world several years after the last wife deceased. His last wife happened to be my Sunday school teacher when I was a teen and I used to visit her after her first husband deceased for counsel.
I have other stories of real life tragedies and the point is that when these things hit, there is really nothing that can be said to do much in the way of alleviation...the ones close to the deceased always have to reconcile the difficult separation of themselves from the one lost and it is a trying, long, exhausting and painful process.
So it is with you, but I want you to know that none are sacrosanct and exempt from the cold touch of death, which has/will touch each of us. It is good to remember that there are and will always be people in worse as well as better situations as we are. I remember when I taught a Senior Teens class at church(gasp---really, it is true!!!) of which nonety percent were girls/women(if you know what I mean), one particularly intelligent and very pretty gal was depressed about her boyfriend leaving her. Anyone who would leave a gal like her had to be a fool, and I told her so, I told her mother so, and I told her step father so.
In the end, there was not much I could say that I had not already said to validate her, without crossing the line, and I finally told her that when she feels ragged and really low, to visit the hospital, and go to the terminal ward, and walk through there seeing the people dying, their families crying, and all the pain and despair that one can feel in that place.
Then consider the state of your life, the youth you possess, the intelligence, attractivety, promise and potential a sublime and class gal like you epitomizes, and be happy-happy-happy.
I would like to say she responded favorably, but that would be a lie.
I am not a behavioral scientist, but seeing what I do of you here, I know you are covering a lot of ground, and doing a thorough job of laying the base of your imminent rebound in a way that will be complete. Too many rush the process, I am pleased to see that you are not.
Consider those who have suffered great tragedies, like the English gentleman I apprenticed under who had been one of the sacrifice troops left behind, as a green new recruit, to slow the march of the German troops at Dunkirk. He was captured and imprisoned, but his girlfriend held true and when he was a sack of bones, near death, and was freed by the Allies, she was there when he returned and with him as he recovered in hospital. They were married, and happy, until she died a year later.
He remarried after coming to Canada, and ended up with a spendthrift shrew. I know he always was thinking of his first wife, but he never complained, suffering in silence, although he told me things that raised my respect for him considerably.
You have lost two, and I cannot ever comprehend how that would feel, but I think you stronger than I and note you are addressing things admirably.
Less Ottawa.
