Death.

It's been ever present lately, not in my own life... but all around in the lives of those who touch and intersect my own. A professor's mother, a friend's mother, a sister blogger's cousin, my best friend Anne's father is playing revolving door with the hospital system and flirting with death through his own self neglect, Frances' girl dealt with her son's father attempting suicide.... In fact we even had a long discussion of suicide in one of my classes this week. I was reminded, and deeply cheered, by the fact that there was a time when I considered that and even in my latest bouts of depression I never considered it again.... because I don't want to hurt those who care for me, and I recognize that this life is as I make it.

Due to all of this the images of funerals have been swimming in the back of my brain. Funerals are cathartic to me. I deal almost too easily with death, my life has been touched by it often. It's sad, but for me it has gotten easier each time. I know my process, and I go through it sometimes faster and sometimes slower, and then I'm at peace again. I also hold an odd belief... that there are too many people in this world already.... the world is overburdened by them. While individuals rarely DESERVE to go (don't assume my belief makes me less empathetic), death to me is a fact of life.... So when one flame goes out, particularly one who is a burden on all those around them and whose impact is constantly negative... though I know there will be someone broken over their demise... I don't mourn them. I mourn the bright ones, but I don't take long to move to celebrating the positive they left behind. It's just my way.

This is some ugly honesty, fair warning to all of you. It made me think I should do my own PostSecrets, but when you read them like this... they're horrible and that's why I had to write this:
I was relieved when you died, dad.
I wish you would have succeeded when you tried to kill yourself because your child deserves better.
It's too bad they called 911.

I have wished that certain people would succeed if they were attempting suicide. I was mostly relieved when my own father died, though the death of the hope that he would one day BE a father hurt for a bit. I went to his funeral (the third time in my life I even saw him after my mother and I moved out) at the request of his family... they who have also been in the back of my mind since my aunt called me recently... and I took a few moments alone with his body where I left a note in his pocket that he was buried with. No one knows it is there but me. I never told another person, until I wrote this. I didn't cry. That was the first time I had seen him since I was 5 years old, over 15 years later.

(He became a heroin addict shortly after I was born, my mother always let him know where we were but he chose not to see me. One of the things my mother always got right is that she was honest with me about him, never bitter, and she never colored events with her opinion unless I asked for it. She was magnanimous towards him and his memory, for me. She also required with an iron will that my family do the same. I'll always be grateful for that. She gave me the space to make up my own mind, which left me room to both mourn and hope, hurt and love, forgive and find peace, and to not be poisoned by bitterness from childhood forward while still not romanticizing this notion of my absent parent.)

I wished that two fathers would die recently... because their children would be better off without them. It's not a thought that's been reserved for just fathers in my life, so don't get the wrong idea that I'm ridiculously scarred and biased. I'm just (a little insanely) protective of children - and aware that some would be better off with a memory than with the reality. One of my harshest criticisms of the human race is that they enter into parenthood so lightly. It's ridiculous how so many people don't take that responsibility as seriously as it is. I know the counterarguments: kids are resilient, blah blah blah, they need to learn that life isn't easy, blah blah blah. I know these things but I feel they can learn a different way and I'm sure if you don't overly protect them life will teach them these things. (Don't even get me started on our current school systems, grrr.) You need to teach them you're human as a parent as well, and not perfect, and no one can or will be a perfect parent... but a parent willing to attempt suicide to hurt his soon to be ex wife is a parent that doesn't give a shit for his child and doesn't deserve them. A parent with a sense that his children must take care of him when he chooses not to take care of himself is one who also doesn't care for his children beyond their use to him - which makes me sick. Having had an absent parent and a dead parent, I've found that a dead one is better. Maybe that isn't true for everyone, and that thought keeps me from wishing it on certain parents as often as I might. Those are harsh judgments, but I can't find within me the capacity to feel bad for it.

In some ways, our medical system has removed evolution's ability to take out those who choose to destroy themselves. I have been glad when someone young or depressed or plain disillusioned has attempted suicide in some way, and was saved, and realized that they were loved and their lives had meaning, etc. I am glad when a premature baby gets a chance at life. There are thousands more examples within me like that where I feel that our medical system succeeds. However, it sickens me when someone is saved from themselves and then are allowed to remove opportunity from the lives of others (either in the form of the family's choice to care for these selfish people who don't deserve it, forgoing other opportunities, or by them having to choose NOT to care for these people and suffering the pain and guilt and judgment that decision brings them). Just because you're on this earth doesn't mean you deserve to be, you just ARE. So do with it what you will. I'm worried because lately this idea is bothering me so much that the arguments for ' we should research this because it could save lives' line falls deaf onto my ears. They're closed right now to empathy to groups of people who do stupid things that end up killing them. They're only open to individuals at the moment. The movie Idiocracy's ideas resound through my brain. Thoughts like this one are roaming around in there too: the environment would be better off with less people to tax our resources.

It's so hard to articulate how I feel about this, I never feel like the complex swirl of both social commentary and familial issues ever come out quite how I mean and feel about them. Basically all of this just means that I'm hurting for those I care about. I care about people, I wish everyone's lives could be better. I hurt for those children, adult or young, being neglected by their selfish parents and family members, me included on a much lesser scale at the moment. It also reminds me to try harder to be aware of my own social impact on all those around me. I can only change myself really, but my impact can be felt by those around me, so that's what I've got to do.

I have an insane amount of work this week, I have to get back to it right this second, but I needed to cleanse a little bit of this first. I'm embarking on a journey through my family history starting this week as well - in an effort to be sure to stop past patterns and be sure that my motion is forward motion.