#30 - unfair

no one should have to experience so many close to them dying. it started less than two months ago. my "oregon grandma" passed away at age 91, pretty unexpectedly. then a month ago one of my favorite residents died at age 90. she slowly got weaker and then finally decided to let go. then this past friday i got the news no one wants to hear.

i was screwing around on the computer at home friday night when i got a call from my friend saying that her sister's husband (who i lived with for awhile) was in the hospital - OHSU. so it was 8:15 or so and i got some stuff together and hopped on the bus. an hour later i arrived at icu where he was, along with my friend and her sister. everything from then was a blur. he had heart failure, they had to do cpr for an hour, he didn't have enough oxygen to his brain, he was on a ventilator and of course there wasn't much hope. i spent the night friday and saturday at the hospital, not really sleeping because tiny couches aren't comfortable for that purpose. i cried a lot. especially every time a new family member arrived to see him. he looked pretty much the same, with a little more scruff than normal. he had a bunch of tubes coming out from everywhere but for the most part didn't look too bad.

although we wanted to have hope that he would get better, the reality was that his organs were shut down, as was his brain. the only thing really working was his heart, which was tachycardic. the ventilator was the only thing really keeping him alive - life support. he had told his wife never to let him live like that, but his mom was on her way from michigan. he had to be kept going till she arrived. it was the longest two days. i couldn't really eat or sleep. i cried more than i ever have. why so much pain? well he was only 31. 5 years older than i. it was tragedy, we were all left asking "why?" and wondering what we could've done to prevent it. what could we do to bring him back? what is the purpose of life if it could be taken away like that? and really the question that bothered me most:
"is it better to have loved and lost or never have loved at all?"

while that question has yet to be answered it makes me afraid of finding any kind of mind-blowing love. put all my energy into this one person, to actually become one. to not want to live without the other, or not be able to live without the other. to feel like you are not whole without him. to feel pain everytime you think of him, gone. can people recover from this type of loss and if so, how?? they really complemented and completed each other. no one else understood either of them but yet they both got each other. why?

so they took him off life support on sunday. i saw him and he looked really dead. in the previous days he didn't look anything but sleeping. but when he was actually gone it was different. he was 31. three deaths in two months. it is a little too hard to understand why. the old people (the grandmas) had lived. they had kids, they traveled, they loved, they lost, they loved again, 90 birthdays is a lot. 31 is not enough. he still had so much to do and it's just not fair. not fair.

sure you could say that none of these people were my direct relatives or even my closest friends, but for some reason it felt so real - so close. it didn't matter the blood relation but the fact that these people gave me so much. making me apple pie, telling me i was funny, teaching me how to cook something. it's the little things. it's not about how long you know them or even how well but each moment you spend with people counts. each conversation you have and each little story means something. those are the things that you remember. in the end you are surprised about the things you remember. when you lose someone so many priorities change and you realize the things that are important. spending time with the friends and family you love becomes it. love is all you need.