The last two weeks have been a mixed bag of results, ranging from horrifyingly humorous to just damn strange. Did I get out on an actually meet? Yes, I did, but more on that later.
More than two years ago my little brother went to sleep and never woke up. His sudden and totally unexpected loss was devastating to my family, his friends and the many others whose lives he had touched over the years.
What struck me then, even in the numbness of my own grief, was how very badly some people reacted to the idea of death. As if it was an affront to their life and happiness to have to deal with it at all. We don’t’ seem to accept death at all, treating it as an enemy to be reviled, the big, dark elephant in the room that no one admits they can see. As a result of this awkward relationship we have with the Grim Reaper, we don’t know how to handle grief; ours or anyone else’s. Like kids at a high school dance we stutter, stammer, try to say the right then and invariably put our foot in our mouths while stepping on someone else’s toes.