It’s a year for big family events - births, graduations, weddings, funerals. Two of my girlfriends will be having babies soon, and another just got married. My nephew is graduating from high school in two weeks, and my young cousin is getting married in August. So, I’ve been thinking a lot about hopes and wishes, prayers of good will.

Somehow it’s natural to also think of fears. I remembered something that Jane Smiley did to let us know her characters early in A Thousand Acres. One sister asked another sister, “What is your worst fear?” And their answers said a lot about them.

So I’ve been asking this question lately. One friend answered simply, “Death.” And my man, after joking about his fear of having his head crushed by something really large, said, sweetly, “A part of me is truly afraid of outliving my wife.”

We got the word that my grandmother died today, and her husband, who absolutely adored this woman, must deal with her loss. May he always feel her love around him, and never fear.

Amen.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 10th, 2007 at 9:48 pm and is filed under sweetness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.