Fragility

My father mailed again about my youngest sister. She’s still (obviously!) in hospital, still on massive doses of steriods in an attempt to halt the creeping numbness and immobility, and her eyesight is going. They did a spinal tap and sent that off to the Mayo Clinic, hoping to determine what is wrong with her. Everyone is so scared.

We’re all such fragile, imperfect creations, aren’t we? Most of us can’t really, truly imagine dying. Oh, sure, depending on how much of a babygoth poseur you are, you might talk about it a lot, but I’ll be that you can’t imagine you, your own personal self, actually dead. I can’t, either. At this moment, inside any one of us, cells are mutating and dividing, illness is breeding in the depths of our bodies. At this moment, there is a car driven too fast waiting for you on the road. Go on, step out into the street…it couldn’t happen to you, could it?

My sister just had a baby. They spent years and many thousands of dollars on IVF trying to start the family that they had dreamed of. The baby was born prematurely, and has holes in her heart and too-small aeortal valves. And now my sister is mysteriously, seriously ill. We’re all such imperfect, impermanent creatures…and sometimes our every dream is doomed to shatter.

Sometimes the lack of logic and fairness in the world really bothers me. I want to feel that there is a plan, somewhere, that things happen for a reason. But perhaps that is another of the myths that we tell ourselves so that we can get through the day.

4 thoughts on “Fragility”

  1. I will keep your sister in my thoughts. It is so scary when these strange, unknown illnesses strike, no answers, just more questions and worries.

    Life is just so very, very fragile. Enjoy every moment of it that you can, because you don’t know when the mutation or the speeding bus is going to be waiting for you.

  2. Thank you. Things like this do make you want to appreciate your life…most of us fritter so much of it away.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

%d bloggers like this: