This time of year is probably the saddest for my family, and this week is the pinnacle in many ways. Yesterday made 50 years, give or take, since my maternal grand-mother gave birth to a son. It was also her birthday. They are both dead. Interestingly enough, I spent a little time yesterday networking with someone from my hometown whom I met through someone else from my hometown. In an abbreviated version of the story, it turns out that she was not only in my little brother’s grade, but in his class. He died when they were ten. It’s amazing to think that he would be almost 28. She remembered always thinking about how tall my/our mother is (and she was especially tall to little children). My friends and classmates used to tell me the same thing when we were little.

Today is the 12th anniversary of my sister’s death, which I referenced in my September 11th post. Time flies. October 18th is the date that my grandmother died. She would have been 94 years old yesterday, had she not died three days after she turned 70. My brother was born three days after my 7th birthday. The link is tenuous, but nobody really minds the number 3.

All these dates and deaths and the passage of time (but especially seeing my brother’s former classmate now working diligently at the U.N. and as a full-fledged adult) got me thinking: we spend relatively little time as children, with two-thirds to three-quarters of our lives as adults. We tend to be adults in various states of competency and capacity, but adults nonetheless. And how do we spend our time? Often in a state of uncertainty, indecisiveness and worried to death, often about death. We spend it longing in many ways for the fleeting simplicity of childhood in its various forms, childlike thrills. We don’t outgrow our childish ways, they simply take on changing faces and get more complicated in relation to growing and aging expectations. In the end, perhaps we are just a bunch of kids trying as best we can to live life as we wish… a bunch of kids trying not to die.