'Til Death Do Us Part

Back in my newspaper days, I learned the cold, hard truth about our typical readers. And I didn't like it one bit.

Despite my clever sentences and columns and award-winning features, people were not getting the newspaper to read that. They wanted the cops and courts reports and the obituaries. The rest was just filler. My life's work. My endless hours of stress. Just filler. Sigh...

A couple of years ago I decided to subscribe to my hometown newspaper to keep up on things. And yes, see who died and who's in trouble. I've become my own worse nightmare. Another sigh...

This morning I was paging through last week's paper and came across the obit for my kindergarten teacher. Now granted, I haven't thought of Mrs. Berkland in years -- many, many years. But I still felt a moment of sadness. When I think of it, kindergarten was really my first concrete memory. Sure I have sketchy memories of events before school, but not many. I do remember Mrs. Berkland, though. I remember learning the alphabet -- frontwards and backwards -- and playing store during recess. Her obit said she was 92. You know how kids always think their teachers are old! I guess she wasn't that old after all.

Unfortunately, this week ended on a sad note for a lot of people I know. Three unrelated deaths. Three different levels of shock and sadness.

One gentleman is the 85-year-old father of one of my husband's friends. I guess when parents truly do reach "old" age, we shouldn't be completely surprised at their decline. But we still are. And since both Jim and I have had friends lose fathers this month, it's an unwelcome reminder that this could happen to us. We certainly don't foresee it and we don't want to think about it. But we feel deep sympathy for our friends and thank God for watching over our parents. For today anyway.

The second death was a young woman in our community who has been fighting leukemia. I didn't even know her personally but so many people I know either knew her or her parents or family members. At age 25, you don't deserve to be going through chemo and fighting for your life. At one of her recent fund-raisers -- where we had to park a half-mile away -- it was evident her battle with cancer certainly brought a lot of different people from different walks of life together for one purpose: to support her and give her hope. While we shouldn't have been shocked at her death on Thursday, the community is saddened because one smiling, courageous girl gave us hope. And now we've lost it.

The third person is someone I do not know anything about. A high school classmate of my niece took his own life the other night. My niece, a 10th-grader, is having a hard time dealing with this. It's a small school. Most kids have been together since kindergarten. It's like an extended family. I can only imagine what she and the other "survivors" are going though. Grief. Shock. Anger. Suicide is such a selfish way to go. I pray God can comfort family and friends who were not prepared for this. Probably not at all.

Death is strange that way. It doesn't matter if we are surprised or if we suspect it's near because of illness or old age. It still shocks us and hurts us. Hopefully, though, it makes us appreciate even more those who are still with us.

I know I do.