Now I need you, despite the fact that you've killed all my plants

The crash that's killed at least three people in the Burnley Tunnel in Melbourne this morning made me think about a whole lot of mortality-related issues while attempting a nanna nap this afternoon (I'm still sick, I have an excuse!).

It's kind of like we're constantly running into possibilities for death every day, even if it never happens until we're old and in a nursing home, passing away our final days wondering whether monkeys live in the wardrobe or something.

Maybe I just ponder things like death too often because of all the times I've come close to it and realised it. Hopefully I haven't used up too many lives...

Anyways. Death. There kind of comes a point in life where death actually has a personal impact on you rather than just being something you hear of people doing on the news. Of course pets die, but it sort of hits home more when it's a relative or friend.

The first funeral I vaguely remember going to was for my great-uncle John where I stood up on the pew and asked what the big box at the front was, was told it had uncle John in it, so I asked when he was going to get out. To a three-year-old mind, I'm pretty sure that makes perfect sense. Great-aunt Mary died years later, but I don't remember much of it.

But when death really registers on the radar, it happens in a big way. In 2000, a girl in my homegroup was killed in a car accident, my Pappa had a massive heart-attack, two more people from school were killed in other accidents...

Life suddenly cuts into pieces where you had someone you love (or like, or tolerate, or are just used to) around, then when they're never going to be around again. There's so much left unsaid, so many more things you want them around to see, things in the future that aren't the same because they're not there. And you can't just rush out and get a replacement, like you could with an indoor plant or something.

*sigh* Okay, rambling. It can be summed up thusly: death sucks.

And in closing thoughts, the words of W H Auden spring to mind:
As the poets have mournfully sung,
Death takes the innocent young,
The rolling-in-money,
The screamingly funny,
And those who are very well hung.

Also, I hate being sick. It steals my brain. I actually had a point with this post when I started out, but that went somewhere else while typing it and it felt like a waste of time not to do something with it *sigh*