Sad but True, by Gillian

It is undeniably true, and equally undeniably sad, that selfish, inconsiderate, people keep insisting upon dying; often at very inconvenient times and in equally inconvenient places. Often they don't even bother giving me any warning; which actually is of no consequence because, when I do have some presentiment of bad behavior on their part and sternly insist that they mend their ways, do they pay attention? No! They just pop their clogs, topple off their perches, in total disregard of my needs and wants.

Now, most of these people are old enough to know better. They must know that I, at a similar age, am too old to deal with emotional upheavals. Bad things just keep getting harder to deal with. So, do they cease and desist from such things? Far from it. In fact old friends insist on dying with ever-increasing frequency.

Take just last week. Nancy, the chef from Betsy's cross-country bike trip, died unexpectedly. She was not only cook and bottle-washer, but she also rode her bike, along with the others. So her death was almost a double whammy: the loss of Nan the cook, and Nancy, the co-rider. She was also the first of the group to die, so that hit everyone very hard. I mean, just how inconsiderate is that? She was a perfectionist, and very competitive, so I guess she just had to be #1. (Actually, that whole group was made up of some very competitive people, so in a way it would not have been surprising if they'd chased each other right into the arms of that old Grim Reaper, like lemmings going over the cliffs.) But no, in the event, Nancy had to be first.

On top of that she was only 68, abandoning ship early, leaving old souls like Betsy to pedal on.

In a final act of selfishness, she had to go and die in some remote half-a-horse Wyoming town in the middle of winter. Whoa! How's that for heaping it on? Just because she fell in love with this Wyoming rancher, just because she wanted to live on his remote ranch, just because she adored the midst of nowhere, we had to traverse the sleet and snow of Windy Wyoming on bitterly cold February days. Huh!

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With that, I guess my attempt at some kind of dark humor has fizzled out. I suppose I had to try it as the only way, at this particular moment, to deal with the sad but true fact that as we age we lose so many friends; faster and faster they fall. All the tired old platitudes, such as death is just a part of life, offer me nothing, though I do try to remind myself constantly that in fact I am very fortunate: in order to lose so many friends you first have to have so many friends. Still, I hate that feeling of always waiting for another shoe to drop, dreading who will be next. Then, one day, I shall be the one who is next. Sad but true.

© February 2016

About the Author

I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have been with my wonderful partner Betsy for thirty years. We have been married since 2013.