Hard Lessons, Quickly Learned
Dear Rachel,
You were so very, very bright. Sharp enough at five or six to carry on a conversation about paradoxes inherent in time travel as we drove home on one of those endless San Diego freeways. Smart enough to skip the very grade that I failed. (As you never tired of reminding me. Warning to parents: Never keep a box of your old report cards sitting around where your child can find it.) Clever enough to zip through high school without really having to work very hard at it. Smart enough to get great grades in college in spite of working 20-30 hours per week and raising a baby.
You were scary-smart. And because of that you gloried in those classes you were taking during your last few years in school. You’d call for no other reason than to talk about sediment, or some marketing concept, or to explain how the tides worked, or why algae blooms weren’t necessarily a problem. It was amazing what you’d learned.
But I’ve learned, too. With your death, here are some important lessons I’ve learned:
> There’s nothing in the world more important than family.
> If you don’t have a great, close family, do your best to marry into one.
> Some good friends will drift away; they don’t know how to handle death, don’t know how to love someone who’s grieving. It’s not their fault.
> Some people who were formerly just acquaintances will step up and become good friends; they know there’s no good way to help someone handle grief, but they’ll try anyhow.
> A few truly good friends will continue to be truly good friends.
> When you think you’re over it, you’re kidding yourself. There is no “over it.”
> People who say, “She’s in a better place now” don’t deserve your time; they’re not even worth your anger. There was nothing wrong with the place you were, and we all want you back.
> The death penalty may in fact be cruel and unusual punishment, but sometimes it’s not quite cruel enough.
In the end I suppose the most important thing I’ve learned is that the person you love most in all the world can be taken from you in an instant. So we need to make sure that the people we love most know today that they’re deeply, unreservedly loved, because one of you may be gone tomorrow.
Love,
Dad
You were so very, very bright. Sharp enough at five or six to carry on a conversation about paradoxes inherent in time travel as we drove home on one of those endless San Diego freeways. Smart enough to skip the very grade that I failed. (As you never tired of reminding me. Warning to parents: Never keep a box of your old report cards sitting around where your child can find it.) Clever enough to zip through high school without really having to work very hard at it. Smart enough to get great grades in college in spite of working 20-30 hours per week and raising a baby.
You were scary-smart. And because of that you gloried in those classes you were taking during your last few years in school. You’d call for no other reason than to talk about sediment, or some marketing concept, or to explain how the tides worked, or why algae blooms weren’t necessarily a problem. It was amazing what you’d learned.
But I’ve learned, too. With your death, here are some important lessons I’ve learned:
> There’s nothing in the world more important than family.
> If you don’t have a great, close family, do your best to marry into one.
> Some good friends will drift away; they don’t know how to handle death, don’t know how to love someone who’s grieving. It’s not their fault.
> Some people who were formerly just acquaintances will step up and become good friends; they know there’s no good way to help someone handle grief, but they’ll try anyhow.
> A few truly good friends will continue to be truly good friends.
> When you think you’re over it, you’re kidding yourself. There is no “over it.”
> People who say, “She’s in a better place now” don’t deserve your time; they’re not even worth your anger. There was nothing wrong with the place you were, and we all want you back.
> The death penalty may in fact be cruel and unusual punishment, but sometimes it’s not quite cruel enough.
In the end I suppose the most important thing I’ve learned is that the person you love most in all the world can be taken from you in an instant. So we need to make sure that the people we love most know today that they’re deeply, unreservedly loved, because one of you may be gone tomorrow.
Love,
Dad
posted by Rod at 11:15 AM
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