I Don't Know

There are times when i sit down to write to help me understand things and sometimes i can write and write and write and tonight i could write until dawn and it wouldn't help, i'd still feel the same and still not have a clue. I got a call this morning from my father, he told me that my 13 year old cousin died last night, taken off life support by her mother in what i can only imagine to be the hardest fucking decision a parent would ever have to make, see she had gone in to have her wisdom teeth taken out the week of Christmas and something went terribly and horribly wrong, be it negligence or incompetence or bad luck, the details don't matter really, the fact is that today my cousin, the girl's mother, is making plans to bury her daughter who just two weeks ago was a happy and healthy kid, somehow she stopped breathing be it an allergic reaction or an overdose by an old dentist, a dentist who as we speak has another patient in a coma from the same mixture of anaesthesia, this one a grown man in his late 60's, she was deprived of oxygen for nearly 10 minutes, i'll spare us all the details, you can do the math, she was put into an induced coma but in the end they couldn't bring her out and her brain stopped functioning and i'll admit i don't have all the details but i can guess that there was no way back, and it struck me that right now there are x-mas presents sitting under a tree that will never get opened, there is a kid who will never have a boyfriend or go to a dance or graduate from college or see a rock concert, all there is now is an empty space in a lot of peoples lives and there is really no good fucking reason that i can find for this to be, none. The rest of us just have to get on with it, as my old man said "there's nothing we can do for her, we have to take care of the living, we have to make sure they are alright..." his niece, his little brother, his mother. My cousin and uncle and grandmother. My grandmother is 85, the matriarch of that side of the family, she raised 4 kids and 8 of her 9 grand kids, (i was the only one she didn't ever really watch, i was the one who reminded her of Dale, my grandfather), the last child she cared for was this girl, her great-grand daughter, born to a teenage mom who did her best and was doing even better to raise her daughter after daddy turned out to be not so swell. Not that this father didn't love his daughter but he was young and male and young males tend to be stupid and selfish, i know, i was alot like that at one time, but this was my grandmother's baby, the last one she raised before she couldn't do it anymore, you could see her old eyes light up when she saw her or talked about her, today i'm almost glad to be far enough away not to see those eyes...

See today i'm just trying to make sense out of the senseless, trying not to think about how i would handle this situation cuz as any parent knows it's a situation we hope to never have to handle, oh it flits through my dim little mind sometimes but i immediately chase it away, my cousin had one child and now that child is gone and honestly i don't know how one gets out of bed the next day after that happens, if you have two or three kids you get up for the ones left, that's a no brainer, but how does one get up? i'd honestly say what's the fucking point, the existentialist in me would scream that this whole living thing is absurd, there is no reward for trying to be a decent human being and therefore why bother, but then again i'm not a one to just chuck in the towel so maybe i'd get up and head to the bar and try to annihilate any sense of feeling i had left... or maybe i'd become a monk, i hope i never have to find out, i do know that when i see my cousin i'll tell her that nothing i say will make a difference and that it's gonna hurt, it's most likely gonna hurt for the rest of her life but that with any luck each day that hurt will get a little less painful until hopefully it's something of a dull ache, something manageable, but i'm a fucking liar, i'll probably just hug her and cry right along with her, save my sage fucking idiot wisdom for the losers at the bar, because really what can you say?

I do know that today i spent a lot of time looking at the boyos after i got this news, hugged them a little longer, was a little more patient, things i should be everyday, things i shouldn't have to be reminded of by someone else's tragedy, i've always seemed to be acutely aware of how fragile and quick life is but sometimes i'm just a fucking idiot, worried about getting to work on time or typing or watching a hockey game, i try to remind myself to enjoy every moment cuz in an instant it can all change, probably started with my old job and the fact that my freedom could have been snatched at any moment or maybe something even more valuable, and right now i'm just lost, my thoughts are jumbled and incoherent as i try to think my way through this, as i think about the people i love sitting in another city and most likely holding on to each other and mourning, in a way that makes me feel better, i just wish it wasn't happening... and of course there is the I-mac, he could tell his daddy was out of sorts tonight, so i put him to bed and took a walk and when i got back he was sitting at the top of the steps, his mother told him he'd be in trouble if he wasn't in bed when his daddy got home but he just kept sitting there and when i walked in with my coffee he smiled at me, i asked what he was doing and he said he couldn't sleep until he got one more hug, i wanted to fucking cry, the kid is much sweeter than his daddy ever was, so i took his hand and walked him back to his room, gave him his hug and covered him up, told him that i loved, he smiled and and curled up in his spot and said "you're the best dad ever, i love you", i don't know what i'd do without those boys and i only hope my cousin can figure out how to make it through this...

And since as my father would say i've had a problem with the universe since i came into it i've been dwelling on shit all day and of course i get to dwelling on the existence of the various deities, particularly ones of the western variety, my question to the ones running around and thumping certain books is that if there is this all knowing, benevolent, forgiving and loving God why is it that he feels the need to let the children suffer? to the let the kids die? i mean aren't they the innocent ones? i mean i'm pretty sure there is no shortage of despicable fucking adults running around the planet fucking shit up, many in his or her name, many committing acts that i think are strictly forbidden in the magic books that have been written, i don't know, it makes my head hurt thinking about it, i think Andy Partridge sums it up better than i can, i'm just writing and trying to make sense of things...