Hope It's No Omen

Today is Friday the 13th. Today also happens to be my 5th wedding anniversary. I’m not particularly suspicious about stuff like that, but my grandma was and would have probably beat me with a broom stick had I told her I was getting married on the 13th of any month: “You will eventually have an anniversary on a Friday,” she would have said. “So?” I would have smart-mouthed back. She was born on a Friday the 13th and had a less-than-ideal life, in her eyes, in large part due to that fact. She might have been right, having passed from this existence to the next at only 52 years of age.

I think a lot about my family history and frankly THAT is what scares the shit out of me, not Friday the 13th. My mom died at 51, one grandma at 52, the other at 45, and I’m already falling apart. What kind of scary shit did I pass on to my kids? Unfortunately, those kinds of things have nothing to do with the date on the calendar.

I’m not afraid of death or even of dying young, if that’s my lot in life. What bothers me is thinking about my children growing up without me and everything I will miss in their lives, just like I sit here wishing I could run across the driveway and show something to my own mom or call her up and tell her the latest funny thing one of the kids did or talk about something that is bothering me.

I miss my mom and I miss my grandma, superstitions and all, and there’s so much I wish I could give back to them for all that they gave to me.