014 - Loss

Ball Point on Sketchbook Paper

I found out before bed last night that a friend of mine passed away unexpectedly.  He and his wife are not much older than I am.  It's a tragic loss.   I feel all of our hearts wrenching as we are pulled together to fill the void, the vacuum, left by the loss of our friend.

They were one of those couples that shine like a beacon of hope on all us single women, proof that true love is out there, there is someone for everyone.   As an individual, he was one of those people who could always make you laugh.  He'd find something, a silly noise, a phrase, whatever it was, and milk it until you were falling out of your chair, laughing so hard your cheeks hurt!  I can't help but smile when I think of him, even through the tears.

For my part, this loss is compounded by two others that have gone before.  This is the third death in three years of a friend, the husband of another friend, all of them so close in age to me.  All three relationships were those beacons, those pillars of faith in the goodness and rightness of love, of hope.  All three of these women had what so many of us want, and it was taken so suddenly, too early, from them.  They deserved lifetimes with their husbands! They got years.    

None of these men were taken by war or accidents. All three, so close in age to me, died from something medical.  Only one was not instant, he fought a long battle in a hospital before he died.

Though I am sad for the loss of my friends, I grieve for the women left behind.  I know I am putting my own hopes and my own fears into what I think they must be feeling.  None of them had children, and while I don't know the reason for this, I suspect the possibility was always forward in time.  The hopes and dreams of family, gone. 

While I feel slightly guilty for making their loss be about me and how I feel, it reinforces my belief in the interconnectedness of every human being in this world.  The loss of one is the loss of many.   

:(