Mortality......

Wouldn't it be odd to hear of your death on the local nightly news? That happened last night. Not to me but to J. Of course the person who died wasn't J himself -- it was someone who happened to share the same name. It was weird all the same.

I was first to hear it on the 5 0'clock news -- before J got home. At first I thought -- How odd.

Then I thought -- I'll have to have J listen to the 10 o'clock news and see how he reacts.

Then....I realized how he'd most likely react. He wouldn't just think it was an odd experience. He'd get all morbid and start creating allllllllll these *what if* scenarios. What really made me hesitate was knowing in my knower that he would ask me how I felt when I heard it.

This could easily lead to trouble because he knows me well enough to know I would have felt it was an odd thing hearing you were dead when you knew you weren't. That would have been (and was) all I would have felt. I wouldn't have been able to get all teary eyed and sniffly (is that a word?) and go with him on his *what-if* trips.

We've had this problem in the past. He's extremely sentimental. I'm not. He thinks I'm hard-hearted. I'm not. He thinks I'm unfeeling. I'm not. He knows who I am and how I'll probably react, so......why ask? I've learned to try and react as I hope he would wish. I utter "Aww's" and "Ooooh's" (whatever's appropriate for the situation), but it's never exactly right or enough.

The only explaniation I have for being the way I am, is that having experienced so many deep emotional shocks during the years, I've learned to protect myself. I live with too many real hurts to have time (or space) for imagined ones.

So, as time for the 10 o'clock news grew closer, I was debating in my head whether or not to *go there*. I was saved from making a decision when he said, "Did I tell you that a salesman called me today saying he'd heard a JC had died in last night's storms?"

Which led to me telling him I'd heard it on the early news. He looked at me and I could see it in his eyes. He was going to ask me how I felt when I heard it. Quickly, very quickly, I asked him how it felt to have people caring enough about him to call and check that he was okay. He looked at me and then answered my question. I think I got a pass on that one......