The valley of the shadow

In which our Hero hasn’t a clue what to say and will just be there as much as ever

I’ve mentioned before the curious occluding effect of being a branch of a transplanted tree. We have had to grow our own senior citizens because the grand-folks of our generation are far away, the larger family is far away, and here has been Eden. My parents generation came here as veritable children, and for most of my life death has been a stranger.

It’s not that it hasn’t happened, but as much as I love my family back home, and as much as I feel my grandfather’s absence, it’s not the same as losing someone close and immediate. Or it is, but it’s muted by time and space. Certainly, with closer family, whatever personal grief has been overshadowed by the pain for the more directly affected. We’ve had accidents, but people I didn’t know as well, or I was too young to really appreciate what was going on, so that I remember not the funeral but the strange rain afterwards.

But I’m a thinker, and so I’m conscious of how unlikely this kind of luck really is, and I’m conscious of how time and the law of averages must conspire to bring a fair measure of grief. My parents get older, my cousins and peers are losing the freedom to ignore middle-age, and the generation after me bind us into time.

And now (well, last week) a particularly ugly lightning strike is revealed. (One of the) Bob’s father has been diagnosed with a cancer my parents can’t reliably name for me, and can’t go back to ask about yet. It’s a less common cancer, and in an inoperable spot. With an outcome measured in weeks to months.

I don’t really have a particular story to go with Bob’s father. Except that he’s a good guy, mostly patient, inclined to be kind. Bemused by the later arrival of his youngest but doting over all three. In love with his wife, not just married.

There isn’t much to say. No answer, and really no question. It’s just something in my head and I needed to set it down. It’s just a grief, not so unusual in the world. Not remarkable, except that I happen to care.