Sometimes, You Just Have to Cry

*Preface*
I wrote this at the beginning of May this year, but I couldn't bring myself to publish it then. 



This past week has been a life microcosm for me. Happiness, relaxation, sorrow, pain...all have entered my life.
I've had a refreshing and very well timed visit with my dear friend Deb, and her wonderful parents, Eddie and Joyce. I love this family-they're like an extension of my own family. Each time I visit them, I am reminded of the rich blessings God bestows on us when we find quality friendships! 
That friendship was needed as I'd had an unexpectedly tough week. There are some new pressures at work (a whole new system coming in-but I got this, I'm sure). Death intervened in an unnervingly sad way last week, to remind me yet again how fleeting this life actually is. 
In the world of dating after the age of 50, quite often, people come and go in my life. More often than not, they stay for a very brief time, then move along, never to be heard from again. Now and then, I'll get a message from a number I don't recognize (because I've wiped it from my phone once I knew there'd be no more contact), I ask who it is, they respond, and I respond with something along the lines of..."Oh. yeah. The guy who...." They don't really stick around after that! 
Every once in a while, I've met one who's become a friend.And then, there's the one or two whom, given different timing, might have turned in to something more. Dan was one of those couple.
When we first dated, a couple years ago, he was coming off the death of his wife. I thought he needed more time to get through that process. I also didn't like how he chose to deal with it, but, he was a grown man. After a few months of dating, I bid him farewell, wished him the best of luck in his future, and went on with my life. We texted a couple of times, but nothing of any significance. He contacted me this year. It was good to hear from him. We decided that maybe we should try again, but that we should go at it slowly and carefully, taking our time. 
Things were going along, we were seeing each other, quietly, not making a big deal of it. He was attending church with me, had lunch a time or two with friends-it was a beginning. Then, he was cleaning up after dinner one night when something suddenly made me look over...just in time to see him slide down the cupboards and fall over sideways, shaking in convulsions. You see, he'd had a very serious closed head injury in August of 2018. He was having a grand mal seizure. For the first time in my life, I had to call 911. It was scary. Unnerving. I was terrified. I was on the phone with the dispatcher, and also watching this man I cared for convulsing on the kitchen floor, blood seeping from his mouth (he'd bitten his tongue severely), and totally unresponsive to any attempt to gain his attention. 
He began to come 'round in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. I'd called a couple of his children to let them know what was going on, and they kept their wits about them and told me where his wallet and keys were. I drove to the hospital, met some of his children there, and a very dear friend came and sat with me for a while. She left. We got to go back and see him. And friends, he seemed alright. He was responsive, listening to the steps they told him the process of finding out what had happened would take, and was tired, but in a decent mood.
I stayed at the hospital until 3 a.m., came home, slept a couple of hours, and went back to be there when he had a brain scan. As the day progressed, I left to run some errands. He'd gotten a bit combative and I needed a breather. He chose to check himself out of the hospital that evening, rather than stay to get the scan results the next day. He later admitted he was jonesing for a cigarette. The rest of that week, I turned my world upside down taking him to work daily (you can't drive after a grand mal for six months), and to an appointment with his regular physician that Saturday. Friends...I'm not going to lie or sugar coat it. I was angry with him for being so selfish as to not stay and get those results. His belligerence and unwillingness to see how that decision could have affected those who cared about him negatively eventually formed a breech too large to do anything but separate us. I wished him well, and prayed he wouldn't drive himself to work and back. 
About a month later, my phone rang on a Sunday afternoon. It was one of his kids...telling me he'd died. I later discovered he'd lain face down on the floor of his bedroom for days before his son walked in to find his lifeless body. Fifty-six years old. Gone. 
I stopped in to the funeral home on my way out of town for a long weekend in Florida. I'd made the plans and bought the ticket before any of this had happened. It was heartbreaking to see his kids, and not any easier to walk up to that casket and see him so still. He was not an idle guy. He was always doing something...cooking, cleaning, woodworking, playing with his cat...who knew he had so little time left? There's One Who knew-intimately. 
I tell you this heartbreaking story, not to make you cry or feel sad, but to remind you...to remind me...that this moment we're in...? It's all we have.all we're promised. And sometimes, you just have to cry.