The stuff we don’t talk about

Mabel sent me this cute image as she was heading into a totally normal medical checkup and while I know that it’s entirely fine, normal, standard, no big deal, totally cool and nothing to worry about….it bothered me tremendously. It’s very, very strange how life creeps up on you. I know I’m not breaking even the tiniest fragment of news here, but I imagine all of us have those moments where our self-perception get rocked by the realization that, wait, wasn’t I a kid just…a few years ago? Weren’t the “grown ups” around us WAY older and wiser and certainly NOT expected in the reflecting I’m looking at?

I have dear friends and loved ones (don’t we all) that have weathered medical crises and some that are mourned…but that prospect is one that I (and I suspect many of us) push aside and blithely deny happening in OUR world because it scared us to our core. At least it does to me. The thought of this amazing life we’ve built being disrupted is one I dread and try not to focus on. Hell, I always say that I get to die first … simply because the concept of life without would be worse.

So, we joke, we put on a brave face, we avoid the topic, we shrug off what we don’t want to be true because we cannot accept that it almost certainly will be some day. Not today. Not tomorrow, please. Not ever…