sudden loss

I was sitting at home last night, after youth group, thinking about getting ready for bed, when my department's secretary called.

My department chair's husband had collapsed while working out, was unable to be revived, and had died. (He was only about 43).

There's just nothing you can say in a situation like that. It's shocking, and horrible, and I can't imagine how my chair must feel.

They have a young son.

She had had a TERRIBLE fall- with the break-in here, and the minor fire, and lots of the typical sort of dumb annoying petty political carping that goes on (she's also involved with the faculty senate on campus which seems to me to basically be a big bitchfest for people who are dissatisfied about things. And she was on the receiving end of a lot of the bitching, even in cases where she had no power to change the item being bitched about)

Her spring was getting some better. And now this.

It just boggles the mind. I can't imagine losing someone that close to you so suddenly. Up to this point in my life, most of the deaths of people close to me have been people who were old, and sick, and it was more or less expected, and in many cases there was an adequate chance to say goodbye.

When stuff like this happens, it awakens all kinds of conflicting feelings in me. Part of me wants to become very loving and open and to remind myself every time I talk to someone that that may be the last words I ever get to have on them (at least on this Earth) and so my words should be loving and kind and wise.

And yet, on the other hand, I catch myself thinking, "but you shouldn't let yourself get attached to people; this is what happens when you get attached - people die or leave or disappoint you and you are really fundamentally alone and isn't it really better to kind of labor under the quiet gray fug of aloneness every day rather than to have a few bright moments of happiness, only to have it wrenched from you?"

Except I don't know how not to get attached to people.

And it also makes me feel like the stuff like what the people I wrote about the other day are doing seem pointless and stupid and useless. If your life could end suddenly, why should you deny yourself little things that bring joy? It's like the dieter who never lets chocolate or bread or sweets or anything that most people regard as a 'treat' pass her lips, and then she gets hit by a bus. And it makes me want to take and spend this weekend out having fun, instead of working on research, and....oh, I don't know. It just makes me ask lots of questions about what I'm doing and why I'm doing it and will I regret it on my deathbed that I went out and picked up trash instead of going to concerts, that I was the one who could always be counted on to be responsible even when it meant that I denied myself doing something I really wanted to. Am I going to regret starving myself of sleep to make the time to work out?

Everyone's walking around today, talking in very hushed tones: should we be making casseroles? where do we send the plants? SHOULD we send plants and flowers or is that just another thing for her to deal with? Has anyone talked to her? Who's looking after their son while she deals with the inevitable paperwork and stuff?

the good news is they are members of a pretty supportive church here in town and I'm guessing that she and her son are getting a lot of help from them right now (They are Methodists; the Methodist church here is one of the larger more active ones).

There's kind of a little unspoken (unspoken because we fear it will sound selfish) subtext: will she still be our chair? Will she decide to move back East to be closer to her family? Will we be able to function effectively as a department for the rest of the semester and the summer?

I don't know. I'm going to be off-campus tomorrow for a science-fair related thing and in a horrible, selfish way, I'm glad I'm going to be away, breathing some clear air. Everyone's so confused here and we're all kind of hurting (W., the man who died, was a prof in another department and we all knew him) but we know our chair is hurting far, far worse. And so there's just this kind of fog over everything - if I had been "second in command" I probably would have cancelled the department's classes for the day - but I don't know.