A Fragile Existence

[Bushmiller]

I sometimes reflect, in my more sombre moments, on how tenuous life is. A couple of incidents have recently re-affirmed my belief in this.

This afternoon I received a call telling me that a work colleague was killed in a motorcycle accident. He was on his way home from Philip Island. Very sad. I'm not sure how old he was. Early thirties I would guess. He had only been with us for about four years as our turbine engineer and as you may have gathered he was a keen motorcyclist.

The second tragedy was to another work colleague and friend. We were on the same shift together when his elder son was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer at age nineteen. The cancer started as a tumour in the brain and was operated on, but had alrea dyspread to the spine. It was rated as a "four" which I am told is as bad as it gets. He was a fit, previously healthy young man but died within four months of the first symptoms.

He lasted twice as long as the doctors predicted because he had started out ahead of the pack in terms of fitness. When he died he weighed 35Kgs down from 70Kgs.

I thought that at the funeral I would be fairly immune to the emotion of the moment, but when I saw his ute with his motocross bike in the tray parked next to the church I too fell prey to the wet eye. Apparantly in his last days he had asked for this and he also asked for the bike and ute to be given to his younger brother.

It all goes to reinforce some of the stupidity of the world. Who knows when circumstances like these are just around the corner.

In a very melancholy mood.
Paul

[FenceFurniture]

Yes it brings it home doesn't it Paul? We read and hear about such things all the time and it has no effect until it's close.

And of course us baby boomers are now getting to the age when we'll be going to a lot more funerals. Maybe it's the advent of numerous funerals at this age that brings on the wisdom that I've been waiting patiently for.

Regards
Brett

[Bushmiller]

Yes it brings it home doesn't it Paul? We read and hear about such things all the time and it has no effect until it's close.

And of course us baby boomers are now getting to the age when we'll be going to a lot more funerals. Maybe it's the advent of numerous funerals at this age that brings on the wisdom that I've been waiting patiently for.

Regards
Brett

Brett

You are absolutely right.

This is the point where I would normally make a facetious remark about wisdom, but I'm not up for it tonight.

We are constantly bombared with philosophy on how to live, but in Western culture we are taught little about how to die and how to cope with dieing. In particular we expect to bury our parents at some stage. It's a given. However we are totally unprepared to bury our children. It's a wrench to our psyche that will destroy us if not very careful. I am pleased to say that my friend, his wife and their younger son are coping well under the circumstances.

However, for them, despair can be one day away at any time in the future. We all react differently and the one thing I have observed are that there are no rules; No guidelines and no rules whatsoever.

Regards
Paul

[FenceFurniture]

This is the point where I would normally make a facetious remark about wisdom, but I'm not up for it tonight.

Prolly very wise under the circumstances (cool, I've done it for you).

...but in Western culture we are taught little about how to die and how to cope with dieing.

Yep, too right There are many things that fall into this category. Professionally speaking, my life would have been dramatically different if I'd known about negative gearing when I was 20 (and other things that can be done with mortgages).

[shedbound]

I sympathise with you! as a Dad of 3 girls that need to be fed every 4hrs 24/7, sleeping through my 10 alarms I set at night would be devastating

[Scott]

You think as nurses we'd get use to death and dying and to some extent, it's true. I'm just that little bit harder on the outside after 20 years in ICU and theatre. But last week one of our colleagues, at 32, passed away. We were all devastated when we found out, even more so when we found out it was suicide. No one had an inkling or clue that things were that bad.

And so the saying goes, life is way too short and fragile.

[SiJ]

Hit a spot with me, Paul

Thoughts with all family and friends involved. Don't we focus every day on the "oh so important" but really unimportant everyday stuff? Occasionally we get nationally kickstarted by big events such as fire and flood, but I guess I (as a teenager in his mid 40's) am starting to trade assumptions of personal immortality for a more realistic approach. Thought of kids going first is too much to contemplate. Most harrowing moment in my life was the funeral for the 10 yr old son of a single mum friend of mine - poor kid had a very unfair burden of misfortune placed upon him, she had sacrificed her life to support the 2 of them.

Melancholic time indeed. Must smell the flowers and realise how lucky I am.

Thoughts with you.

Si

[BobL]

You hit a spot with me too Paul. On the 30th I was at a funeral for the husband of a work colleague who died from a fall off the roof of their house. She has two small kids under 5 years of age and no other family in Australia. They had been in Australian for 4 years and just bought their first house. Lots of wet eyes at the small funeral.

[Bushmiller]

Unfortunately Bob this is exactly what I meant. As we get older the law of averages comes into play as we are exposed to more potential incidents and then finally we reach an age where people are past their use-by date.

It all sounds a little gloomy. However there are many light hearted moments too and these are the ones to cherish.

Just going back to the motorcycle incident, I used to ride a motorcycle and on a particular occasion I had ridden a long distance to visit one of my uncles. On arrival he confessed he was pleased to see me but also admitted he worried when he knew I was riding the bike.

At the time, as a bullet proof twenty five year old, I thought he was fussing unneccessarily, but on reflection I know it was his was his concern. Incidents like that I have mentioned above make me understand his viewpoint. T o his credit he never tried to disuade me from riding.

In fact about five years ago another work colleague was killed in a motocycle accident. He had left our company by then. Not that that lessened the consequences of the accident.

Regards
Paul

[jimbur]

When our nephew started his motor mechanics apprenticeship his first tutor started the session by looking round and saying that at least one of them would be dead in a road accident by the end of the course. He was right.
Fragile is exactly what our existence is.

[Bushmiller]

I sympathise with you! as a Dad of 3 girls that need to be fed every 4hrs 24/7, sleeping through my 10 alarms I set at night would be devastating

I read this at the time of posting and thought it a bit unusual, but being a little wrapped up in my own sadness I put it to one side. I regurgitated the thought a few minutes ago and did some research.

Glycogen Storage Disease.

Reasonably rare so with three out of four children suffering from the disease I am not making a great leap in assuming it is a genetic disorder. How do you get enough sleep? How do you even function with such broken sleep patterns? Do you have to administer medication?

Please feel free to treat the questions as rhetorical if you wish as I sourced my information from your public profile. I would quite understand if "It's difficult" was your reply.

Like I said, we live a fragile and tenuous existence and clearly the ultimate tragedy does not have to befall us to make life trying in the extreme.


Regards
Paul

[shedbound]

G'day Bushmiller, Thanks for your thoughts. I am more than happy to answer any questions about GSD in the hope that one day, someone just might remember and could save a child's life. Being that it is a rare disease help is hard to find help, our treating doctor is in Florida,USA. One of a handful of specialists world wide. As far as sleep? I classify myself as an insomniac. My wife and I take each night in turns. And I must admit even when I should be asleep I can't or when I do I awaken thinking I slept through the alarms. As far as medication, the girls do cornstarch therapy. The days of nasogastric tubes and seizures are gone since finding our new doctor(all praise be it to him).
Suprisingly I still have 10 fingers, I am no longer working as a carpenter(last day was a fall off the roof with a 7 1/4 makita) so now I am a carer to the girls which is fulltime anyhow's, dabbling with my timber when given the chance, or any jobs I can get to do in the shed.
From a parents perspective sleep deprivation is the hardest part, but it's harder on the kids.
I must also praise our small community of 550 people, we get so much support it's overwhelming. such as thepiston's car club organized The Hazelwood car and bike show that raised near $6000 dollars, only a few weeks ago for the girls to be able see their doctor on 2014-15.
I hope your pain is easing also
regards
Joel

[Bushmiller]

Thanks Joel for filling us all in. I was completely unfamiliar with the disease.

Falling off the roof is no good either. I did that twice when we built our house down in NSW. I was a bit more agile in those days and i dusted myself off and went straight back up. I'm really careful nowadays when I'm up high as a fall would be curtains for me.

You didn't say how old your children are but with your age and the level of care they require I assume they are young. Will they get to a stage where they can look after themselves?

My pain on behalf of friends and colleagues has now fallen into a numbness. I think that each time a new bereavement occurs it drags up all the old ones and you relive each memory. In our case in the immediate and extended family we had three deaths of young people.

Regards
Paul