So, I've had a lot of death going on this week. Well...not really this week so much as yesterday. I got the double whammy yesterday when I lost two people who mattered to me. The first, my grandma, passed away at about 2:30am Tuesday morning. We'd expected it, but only since Saturday. At some point I'll talk about my experience with "saying goodbye" and "giving permission" to die...but that's not this post.
The second person actually died back in June, but I didn't find out until yesterday afternoon. Already raw from my Gram's death, when I opened the casual email from the St. Olaf education department asking for my deets so they could update their database and read their announcement of "oh, by the way, Mark Schelske died", all I could do was drop my jaw and stare at the screen. Again, at some point I'll talk about Mark and what he meant to me personally and professionally, but this is not that post.
Whenever someone dies, I become an insomniac. And not a tired insomniac, but a fully energized, no concept of time insomniac. Last night when I cracked open a diet coke and sat down to read and waste time on Facebook, it didn't even occur to me to look at the clock until the Golden Girls was over and Cheers had begun. It was 1am.
It's like I want to take over the living for those who have died. Or, like I suddenly get a shot of the reality of how little time we actually have on this Earth. Sleeping isn't a waste of time, of course, but when it's compared to death, well, I guess I feel like doing anything is better than sleeping or dying. And I wonder if the two are so connected in my head that, especially when I'm presented with death smack-dab in the face as I was yesterday, maybe I kind of feel like if I go to sleep I'm dying a little as I go.
Either way, I'm not happy to have lost two people I care about. And I'm not happy to not be sleeping (even though it's more or less my choice--I probably *could* sleep if I, you know, went to bed). So, right now, this girl isn't happy.
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