Fragile

I have recently lost something very important to me: My hard drive.

I did not lose it to a virus, or an accident. It did not stop working after having water spilled on it or being dropped from a table. It had the luck I hope to have when I’m old; it went to sleep and didn’t wake up again (I may sound like I take death lightly, but that really is the way I hope to die one day: painlessly, in my sleep). Anyway… the irony in all this is that on the day I realised it had been quite a while since I’d done my last backup and thought “I should really do one”, I turned my laptop on and it did not respond. Not one blink, no blue screen, no error message, nothing. Just plain silence and blankness.

As distressed as I was about all the things that I lost – and luckily I had many of those things stored online but I still lost LOADS – now, about two weeks later, with a new laptop and trying to get some stuff back, I started thinking about how fragile everything in life is, even the things we take for granted the most, and consequently, about how fragile life itself and the people we care for are.

So, on a more serious note:

There are so many ways to be fragile…

One can be a health-related fragile person: weak lungs, immune system, mind; the list goes on and on. How many films have we seen of beautiful love stories, and then halfway throughout it our hero/heroine finds out their one true love, the ultimate love of their lives, whithout whom they cannot live, is terminally ill and will die a horrible and painful death in a matter of weeks/months?

With this one we don’t even see the terminally ill bit, just the afterwards…
(Obviously , photo not by me)

And do you know what is worse? That does happen. More often than we think, more often than we would like to be reminded of. Life is a fragile thing. It can end in a second: due to ilness, an accident, or many other, more obscure and horrible reasons. Dealing with mortality, our loved ones’ and our own, is not easy.

I lost a friend earlier this year. She wasn’t my best friend. I hadn’t seen her in longer than I would like to, for various reasons.  I didn’t even know as much about her as I wish I did. But I did know she was a wonderful woman. I did know she touched the lives of many different people, from so many different social groups and backgrounds that it’s even a bit funny to think about it. Her rememberance gathering was filled with love, laughter, some tears and a general understanding that hers was a life to celebrate. So why did she have to go at such a young age? She was in her 40s. An active, healthy woman, with a partner, friends, a good job, several hobbies, a good life. And most of all… a good heart.

The answer I found for that question was simply: because it was time. It’s not fair. It’s not comforting. If someone had said it to me when I was grieving, I would probably have punched them in the face – actually, I wouldn’t, because violence is never the answer. But in the end, maybe that IS the reason. It makes absolutely no sense and is no help at all to the process of grief, but it’s what I could come up with.

Grief…

Everyone deals with it in a different way. Some people go through all the textbook stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. Some just cannot deal with any of it and get stuck in one. Isolate from the world; start acting as nothing’s happened, bottling things up until one day, years later, it explodes; blame others for what’s happened and get angry at them rather than dealing with their pain… some seek therapy to deal with it all, join support groups, turn to religion.

Whichever religion…

Whichever faith path…

In a group or alone…

I guess it could be said that there are 7 billion ways to deal with death and grief, with life and how fragile it is. It can’t be changed. All we can do is enjoy what we have now, live for today and try not worrying so much about the future. I know I’ve certainly not managed to master that art, but I’m trying to live by what my friend calls “The ‘that’s-what-we-have-for-today’ Philosophy” and it does seem to work. Think about today. Think about what you can do today, what you can achieve now, your immediate goals. I’m not saying don’t plan for the future, but don’t freak out – like I usually do – if you don’t manage to tick all those 30 items that you have in your to-do list for today. Do your best, enjoy your loved ones, and most importantly, enjoy life.

Oh… and backup your files frequently.

Seriously.