Memento Mori

A very strange thing happened to me the other day while tending to my family's graves, especially while laying a bouquet of flowers on my father's.

I can remember being twelve or thirteen and watching my grandfather's casket being lowered into the ground and knowing what was happening, and coming back at eighteen or nineteen and looking at his headstone and comprehending what had happened. Mostly, my heart broke when I saw that my grandmother had already bought her plot next to him and had her name and birth date carved in the headstone. I boo-hooed out there that day when I realized what it meant.

Like I said, I went to put flowers on my father's grave, and I saw my mother had bought his head stone with her name and birth date already inscribed, I boo-hooed like I did when I was a teenager.  There, in big, black, bold letters was our last name - a name I don't think I'll ever be able to give up for a husband, not only my father's name, but my name, too. A name that I feel like is such a part of me and so representative of who I am, I can't disassociate it from myself and my identity. And it scared me. And it reminded me, everything in this world passes away, and I will, too.

I can honestly say I've just about got everything I wished for as a child. I have a job I like, I finally live in a house I pay for, I own my car, I pay my car and health insurance. And for the first time in my life surrounded by my dead family, I felt like an adult. I haven't been so lucky as other people my age and had the right of passage of marriage and children (which I feel like is most people's right of passage into adulthood). And it's in that moment that I realized, I am actually a little thankful that I haven't experienced that feeling yet because somehow, I feel this is fitting. I haven't had a "normal" life or an "easy" life, so why would entering in this phase be any different?

My family is falling apart. My mother keeps busy (which I actually think is good for her) but she rarely has time to talk to me. My baby brother has gone to the marines (he's already gone, actually). And my other brother and I...well, we try, but we never really have gotten along. Maybe this is why I've never been able to marry. This is a tough time, and it seems as if there is no joy. I think only the hope of having my own family could salvage my current one and bring everyone together again.

Then again, maybe I don't get to have any joy. Maybe this is just what God has picked out for me. I hope not.

I swear I'll quit posting about death soon. I just can't shake that topic lately. It's haunted me too much this year.