Good grief

People on grieving sites are always expected to give the "oh you have it worse" preference to someone who has lost a child to death.  I can't really speak on that, because I don't have children.  But, I will anyways, even though I'm happy to let them feel that way.  I will, because I find the need to categorize grief pointless.  What's the purpose of "your grief is more heart-wrenching than my grief?"  I don't get it.  I can't get it.  Just like those folks don't get my depth of feelings, because their primary relationship wasn't their mother.  It was their child or even their spouse.  Or maybe they in fact disliked their own mother.  This has been pointed out to me during my lifetime.  The fact that not everyone has a good relationship with their mother.  Heck, I'm not saying my relationship with my mother was perfect.  It wasn't.  We were too much alike to always get along.  Truth is, no close relationship is free of discord, but no amount of strife could change how I felt about my mother.   She was my true love in life, and I miss her every day, some days excruciatingly so.  One minute I'm tooling along, the next minute a longing pain stabs me in the heart.  Missing.  Longing.   Hugging my father's new girlfriend who has a touch of dementia, never ceasing to think, "You aren't my mother."

I realize that people feel like it is against "nature" to lose a child to death, while perfectly in agreement with nature to lose a parent to death.  That would be true if age were the only deciding factor in death.  But, it's not.  Nature is full of disease, accidents, drugs, mental illness and God only knows what else.   All of those things kill young and old alike.  It's a sad reality, but definitely a reality.  Maybe I've been reading too much Jack London. 

I have tasked my father with outliving me, which suits him.  He's not hung up on the idea that I'm supposed to outlive him.  Besides, there is always one more fish to catch.

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