My mother had a friend named Lorraine when I was growing up. Lorraine was awesome, but unfortunately had many health issues. She was diagnosed with MS and then later with the cancer that ultimately took her before she was even 50. One day she said, "A lot of people say 'Why me?' with diagnoses like these, but I think 'Well... why not me?'"
After Klaus died, someone I peripherally knew DM'd me on Facebook and said "Man, what did you do to deserve that?" And let's ignore how unbelievably cruel that was at the time and focus on the underlying message: that tragedy should be earmarked for someone else but most certainly never for us.
Framed that way, it's pretty ridiculous, isn't it? If we all believe tragedy is for someone else, then, who? Who is this "not us" person?
Maybe because I remembered Lorraine's take on it or maybe because Bill told me so much about losing his previous wife Laura - I don't know, but I never once thought "Why me?" after he and Klaus died. I thought a lot of other things, like ENOUGHICANTTAKEANYMORE but I never thought that my life would somehow be spared of tragedy. I knew that so much was hitting at once because sometimes, that's just how it goes. I tried to take a very zen approach by saying it was just my season to go through it, but that's really what it was. Why me? Why not me?
It also strikes me as odd that anyone would think that a higher power would kill my husband and dog because of something I did. Seriously, wtf? If that's truly how someone thinks it works, that's a level of cruelty I want no part of. While I do think karma exists in the sense that we get back what we put out in the world - if we're kind to people, we tend to see the kindness in others - I don't think that karma works by killing innocents because I mistakenly stole a packet of cashews when I was 15.
We're so conditioned to not talk about unpleasant situations that we're caught off guard when they happen to us, but the reality is that not a single one of us will live a life completely untouched by tragedy. Some have it far worse than others, for sure, but we all will go through some incredibly difficult times. For me, a lot just happened within a short time frame but even that's not that unusual. In her TED talk about grief, Nora McInerny leads with how she lost her father, her husband, and her pregnancy within months of each other. It's a pretty startling opener, but I'm guessing she wanted to jolt us into understanding: this is real. This happens. And it could happen to any of us.
This is not to say we should live in fear of what could happen - not at all. Quite the opposite. We should just live, as fully as we can, because we don't know how long any of it will last. For me, it's humbling and humanizing - we're in this together and not one of us is any more or less important than others.
If we're able to flip the lens, the sweet moments are just as surprising because we can ask "Why me?" to those as well. Why did I get so lucky? Well, why not? That's just how it goes.
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