Later note: after all that stuff below, I just got an email from close friends
telling us that all the emotional, physical, and fiscal pain of IVF has paid off
and they're going to be parents in nine months. You know how I keep saying life is
a sine wave? Make that a roller coaster.
This isn't what I was going to write about. I was going to talk about my college
roommate's visit, with her husband and baby, and how funny it is to compare them
to the cousins we spent time with in Korea – the difference between a mother with
her first new baby and an old hand on her third. Instead, I've been thinking what
a mishmash life is, with joy and grief and hope and memory all mixed together.
It's not a wheel, with the neat ordering that implies, or if it is, it's more like
a gearbox, with all the gears meshing so that the beginning of one person's life
may touch the middle of another's and the end of a third's.
This
morning, it took me a while to leave the house, talking all the way. I exchanged
goodbye hugs with a new mother, a father of four near-adults and a new baby just
getting started again with this second family, and a little guy just starting out
to see life, who's enjoyed two and a half months of it and seems to approve so
far.
A little later this morning, I reflected that it has been just
about half a life since I shared a dorm room with that little guy's mother – our
lives, not his. She hasn't changed much, except to mellow a bit. I don't know if I
have – I feel the same in my core, but there might be some weathering and wearing
down of rough edges.
Right after that, I got pulled into a meeting
where the boss told us that a coworker had just died. Heart attack, no warning, in
his late forties.
I still don't know most of the names here, so it
took me a few minutes to figure out who this man was, but it turned out to be
someone I've talked to quite a bit, and liked – I just didn't have the name to put
with the face.
Ironic -- I've heard him taking part in conversation about
how dangerous riding a motorcycle out here is, but it wasn't his bike that killed
him. If anything, it might have been the running he'd started doing for his
health.
Never mind the eternal rest stuff, because I don't think he'd
like it. I hope, wherever he is, there are motorcycles, and cool gadgets, and
mental and physical challenges, and most of all, people who like a spirited
conversation. He'd be happy in a place like that. Come to think of it, I'd be
happy in a place like that.