It's 3am and I am up because apparently when I am sick it is customary for me to wake up at 3am, mind racing with thoughts and ideas.  I wish I could instead summon this sort of thinking when I am not sick and when it is not the middle of the night but here we are nonetheless.   

Tonight I am supposed to share my life story and I guess that has been in the back of my mind because that is where my mind went this 3am.  I was thinking about how I am going to organize my story to keep it brief and still highlight the critical, most telling milestones.  I remembered that a couple years back I was doing this Bible study wherein we learned a technique for compiling our life story and the format was this: divide your age by five and then segment your life in that many years, give or take.  Then organize your thoughts by considering the most influential happening(s) of each segment of time.  I was 25 at the time so divide my age by five and you get five, which means I was to look at my life in five year increments.  I am 27 now and you get roughly the same number plus a few months.   

So this 3am I decided to give it a whirl because I was up and what else was I going to do while I was just laying there sniffling and trying not to cough?  Okay, years one through five.  That's easy.  Mom died.  Next.  

Years five through ten.  I must be in a morbid mood because the first thing that came to mind was the death of Grandma-Down-the-River as we called her.  Images of Little Red Riding Hood might be flashing through your mind as you read this but I just think about how we had to go south of the River to get to her house because when you are from Kansas City you think in terms of crossing the Missouri River to get someplace kind of far away.   I don't think I have ever really considered her death a milestone before or even included it in my life story but like I said I must be in a morbid mood because there you have it.  Next thing I know I realized that that was the second time in my life I saw my dad cry.  Both times I wanted desperately to make it better-- whatever "it" was because I was too young to understand at the tender ages of three and eight-- but I also somehow knew I was powerless to do so.  So at three I cried with him and at eight I turned from outside his bedroom door where I heard the sobs and walked quietly to my room, where I probably cried.   

Years ten through 15 Aunt Lora passed away.  By this point I was thinking almost exclusively about how often I lost my loved ones.  Aunt Lora was one of my favorite people in the world and it was the second time in my life that I recall crying inconsolably.  I mean in an absolutely-don't-know-what-to-do-with-myself-can't-stop-crying kind of way.  The first time was when I was twelve and I finally realized that my mom was dead.   

Fifteen through 20: this was a doozy because both of my remaining grandparents died.  I was super close to Grandma and Popo because they lived about three miles away and made it a point to see us multiple times a week, including Sunday dinner when there was always a feast.  Although I loved her dearly I was never as close to Grandma as Popo, especially at the end because she got kind of mean as a result of being in constant pain and exhaustion from knocking at death's door.  But Popo was always kind and loving--even up until the end when he just got crazy from the bleeding in his brain-- and we always had a special relationship because I let him tease me and I adored him.   

So by the time I was 19 years-old I had already been to more funerals than one would wish to attend in a lifetime and at least three of them signified for me the burning down of a safe refuge.  This is why my counselor hypothesized that I have issues with abandonment-- why I fear-like-the-bloody-plague losing all of my close relationships.  Because apparently even though one might understand cognitively that people don't mean to leave you when they die (usually), there is a place in your subconscious that simply feels like you have been kicked to the curb and left for dead.  Anyone who has lost someone close knows that it feels like a part of yourself has died right along with your beloved.  I guess a part of me also feels like there was something I did to deserve it.  And that's where the fear lives.   

I'm 27 now and it has been a while since I have lost someone very close but to be honest I feel like I am only biding my time because I am close to several people who are very old and a couple animals with short life spans and death is unpredictable anyway so, who knows, I could be next to kick the proverbial bucket.  In the meantime I have seen friends lose moms and grandparents and dogs and unborn babies and my best friend even lost her little sister to a long battle with cancer before she graduated from high school (someone explain the justice of that to me).  I know I started out thinking about my life story and now find myself concluding a story of death but, "death," as they say, "is a part of life," after all.  It certainly is a big part of my life.   

I won't be sharing this whole saga tonight because as much death as I have experienced it is only encompassing enough to be a part of my life story, not to be my life story.  Still, it is what has kept me awake in these wee hours of the morning thinking about my life and why I am the way that I am.  Recently I was reading a book and was stopped by these words: "she has the softness and generosity and toughness of someone who has endured great loss," and I could not help but wonder at what a beautiful combination of characteristics that is and how it is probably being forged within me at every funeral.  Now I finally understand the term, "a severe mercy." 

And I think I am ready to sleep.