Life's Turns

A couple of posts ago I pondered my difficulty with abandoning an old friend in order to participate in an upcoming race. Sometimes decisions do happen for a reason. As I was going about my evening routine of tending to the animals, the phone rings. It's my old friend. She said "it's a good thing you weren't planning on going."

My initial thought was that they had changed the date of the service, or that some other subsequent unfortunate occurrence had befallen their family. "I'm not going either," she continued.

I immediately and selfishly felt a sense of release and relief. My decision not to go didn't turn out badly. As it comes to pass, she did not want to participate in a formal ceremony, which the event had turned into. She cited various and sundry other justifications (pregnancy, her husband not wanting to go either), perhaps more to convince herself than to convince me. I think she'll be okay with the decision not to go now. I wonder if years down the road she'll regret not attending. Given the physical distance between my family and I, I have missed some deaths including a grandmother who died of old age, an uncle who shot himself in the desert after having a heart attack (because he was alone and distant from any aid and did not want a slow death) and an aunt who'd been in ailing health. I regret most not attending the ceremonies for my grandmother, not so much for her sake, but for my mother's. There are times when I feel badly that I don't travel north to family often. At the same time, I'm comforted within the heart of my current family unit. It provides love and support. The distant family often supplies a sense of discomfort, perhaps solely caused by the fact that I'm so far removed. A veritable catch-22. I take a sense of solace in the fact that I'm not like my eldest sister who we only know through her web page. For the past 14 years or so she has basically refused contact with us. I wonder if some day she'll regret the distance.