The unexpected

Some things are weird, you know? Apparently if you are me? A whole lot of things are weird. Complicated, if you will. I get excited over recycling. I fret when I am unfriended on The Facebook. I devote a whole lot of time to thinking about things I can't change. I found myself in a meeting last week during which at least twenty minutes of the conversation was devoted to which Star Trek character the team lead could most closely identify with. That's weird. All of it.

You know what else is weird? Ordering a death certificate for someone who died at thirty-five. Someone who used to be your spouse. Someone who, even in death, remains a mystery.

It's weird.

More than weird, really. I'm angry all over again. I kind of hate myself for having any emotion about this at all, but quite honestly? I do. He was not a good person and death did not make him a good person, but something in me makes me unable to rejoice in the death of anyone. No matter who they are. I just can't do it.

There is something inherently wrong about being thirty-five and dead. Maybe because I am thirty-five. I am still becoming who I want to be. I am still growing as a human being. I am still learning a lot of everything. Thirty-five is very young. So. Very. Young.

Maybe it's because I don't have the answers. I'll never know what he was thinking or why he decided to pretend that the Boy and the Girl didn't exist. Why I am the one, once again, left to answer the questions that have no real answers.

I watched Maury last night (shut up) and on the show, amidst the screaming young women who were 200% sure that P-Dawg was the father, was a lady with a dead son who wanted desperately to be a grandmother. The outcomes aren't generally positive for those on the Maury program, but this time? It was. The baby was proven to belong to her dead son and she rejoiced as she squeezed the blond toddler (who was, understandably, quite alarmed) and sobbed in gratitude for this life. This gift.

It made me sad. More sad than the Maury program usually makes me, which is very, very sad.

I cannot allow myself to think of scenarios in which my son or daughter died. I simply cannot. But I would like to believe, and do believe, that if they had a child, walking this earth, a small piece of them that I was still able to see and touch and hold and listen to and love, that I simply could not let that rest. I cannot imagine not wanting to know every single thing I could about this person. Do they have her eyes? Do they make that face like he did when he smiled?

I can't imagine this. It hurts to even try.

I am trying to put myself in other peoples shoes and maybe I just can't. I am approaching this as a mother and maybe that's the wrong way to look at it. Maybe this is just another one of my failings as a human being. This inability to understand. Because I can't look at my daughter without thinking, "I want to know every single thing about her". I can't look at my son without thinking, "He makes me laugh every day of my life and I want that forever". I cannot look at the pair of them collectively without thanking God for giving me the best years of my life. I cannot ever, ever imagine not wanting them around. Not wanting their spouses to be part of our family. Not wanting to love and nurture and know their children.

Ordering a death certificate is like another death. It's somehow an acknowledgement that I'm never going to have the answers. That I'm always going to have to wonder why. I'm angry all over again and sick and furious with myself that I can't fix anything. Angry that it probably was all for the best, but I just can't see it now.

It's weird.

I don't like it.