Funerals, weddings and lifecycles

On Saturday I heard that someone I know from Al Anon, whom I will call Margaret, had died. Which was something of a shock. She was quite young, maybe in her early forties, and I hadn't seen her for some time. When someone that young dies, it can be pretty much one of two things: cancer or suicide. Which it was doesn't really matter.

Margaret's passing made me reflect on all the cancer and dying I see around me. A cousin has pancreatic cancer, the mothers of not one but two of my brothers in law are in different stages of the passing process, but are in it, nonetheless, and a friend from high school just posted about her 22ish son's cancer. Plus the sister of another friend has gliobastoma, I just heard. On the one hand, knowing a lot people with cancer is pretty much a function of being 53 and knowing a lot of people. This is just what my life is going to be like for a while, if not the rest of my life.

Usually, when people get to the age of much grey hair and much dying around them, it is offset by a stream of weddings and births amongst their children and their peers' children. But that hasn't quite started happening, and it is our own damned fault: it's because we married and the started families late, relative to historical standards. Time was, people married in their teens or early twenties and started families a few years later. So it was normal to be a grandparent around the age of fifty. But we got married in our late 20s at best and started popping out the littluns even later. Natalie was born when Mary was 36 and I was 34, Graham three years later. Do the math.

At the very least, I like to think that the stability of our household (relative to the one in which I grew up) and the priority we have given to family all along the way will communicate something to our kids, and at the very least won't make them anxious about getting in on the settling down game from the get go. Fingers crossed. I am not far from ready for some grandchilluns!