Endings

So last summer I attended my 20 year high school reunion.  High school was a good time for me.  I enjoyed it immensely at the time, and in retrospect feel truly lucky.

I talked with people I hadn’t during high school and found out that we had much in common.  I talked with people I disliked in high school and found that I still didn’t care for them.  I saw people I kept in touch with, and some I hadn’t.

There was one person there that I hadn’t kept in touch with, but wish I had.  It was so good to see her.  I only got to talk with her for a few minutes, but I was hopeful that we would be able to stay in touch going forward.

A couple of months later I found out she had committed suicide.

What?

I have to admit that it still distresses me if I dwell on it.

I mentioned to a co-worker whose opinion I value later that week.  I said that I wish I knew why.  I was told that “Even if you knew you couldn’t have done anything about it.” 

My first reaction was to deny that I would have tried to “talk her out of it”, but to be honest with myself, had I known she was thinking that way, I’m sure I would have tried to help.

I’ve been told that sometimes suicide isn’t always about things bad, but that sometimes a person looks around and thinks “This is it?  There’s nothing more?”

A few years ago I went for breakfast at IHOP with my grandfather.  At the time my mom was sick, and I was going to drive him out to see her.  Grandpa was a bout 90 at the time, and Grandma had been gone for a few years already.  Over breakfast we had a real conversation about, life, in general.  He commented that he hadn’t thought he would outlive any of his children, and that he had days when he felt like Methuselah. 

Just a couple of months later the got pneumonia and was gone three days later.

He certainly didn’t commit suicide, but I think he looked around and thought; “This is it?  There’s nothing more?”, and sort of gave up.

There are times when I miss him, miss both of them, but instead of remembering the end I think I’ll choose to remember the other times, and be happy for them in that they got to go on their own terms.

Fat Raccoons

Last weekend I got to go camping with the cub scouts!  I once called camping with the boy scouts total chaos.  If that’s true then camping with the cub scouts is ultimate chaos.  The amount of uncontrolled energy is staggering. 

I honestly don’t know how the cub scout den leaders do it.  I really don’t.  Just one night with a large group of sugar fueled, up past bedtime, out in the woods kids make me want to run away to some quiet place and practice Buddhist meditation. 

I let Jacob run while I set up the tent.  He got to play, I got to work.  Part of me wants to make it hard for him so he doesn’t want to go on to boy scouts, but I’m not that selfish.  Yet.  Dinner was hot dogs that were amazingly un-burnt. Chips, chips, cookies, and watermelon.

I’ve always had a hard time keeping track of Jacob after it gets dark.  I know I should trust him more, but it’s hard sometimes.  In any case I got him glow sticks, and that made it easy to keep tabs on him, so that is going to get added to the list standard equipment when I’m camping with him.  He finally ran out of energy at 1030. 

Did I mention that it was cold?  I checked the weather on my cell phone, at bedtime it was 39 degrees.  Once I got him into his sleeping bag and he warmed up he was out like a light.  I woke up a couple of times in the middle of the night, with Jacob partially laying on me.  Ugh.

The morning plan was to get up pack and leave.  Breakfast was on your own.  The Raccoons that visit cub world in the night at Beaumont must be the best fed animals in the world.  Cub scouts seem to drop as much food as they eat.  In the morning I checked out the picnic table we had used for dinner the night before, and there was food still just sitting out.  None of it appeared to have been disturbed; so either it was too cold to the raccoons to come out, or they were so full that they just weren’t hungry.

In either case us people were hungry, so we stopped at IHOP on the way home…