Maybe writing this all down will help me sleep......

I was working the bar today, an unusual thing for me to do on a Tuesday. We were pretty slow but the few guests I had were intently watching the Michael Jackson tribute on TV, so I was able to catch most of it, since there was nothing else really to do. For the most part, I felt it was pretty tasteful even though it reminded me more more of an awards show with a somber undertone, but it didn't move me at all. That is, until the end when his daughter took the mic. Then, like most viewers, I started to cry. But unlike many others, I couldn't stop. I lost it. It put me right back to my own dad's funeral almost two years ago (which I still can't believe), when I was standing on stage doing the exact same thing, though for the life of me I cannot even remember what it was that I said. This all got me thinking a bit, surprise, surprise.

While it's never a "good" time to lose someone close to you, I think there are times when it is "better" or "easier" than others. In regards to losing a parent, there is a range in which I believe it is most difficult, and that is from around 8 til about 30. I'm not saying this is a rule, and I don't mean for it to diminish what other people have gone through, but based on a few conversations and my observations, I think this is generally true.

Before that age, there is little that you remember as you go on in life. Most first memories are at or after age 5, and the general memories after that for a few years are usually just vague. Now that introduces other issues when a parent is lost this early in life, such as dealing with the fact that you never really got to know them, but for what I'm talking about, the coping, it's a little easier because most of life as you will remember it will be without them.

Then there's the time after 28. For the most part, at or around this age, people have found themselves. They generally have an idea of what they will be doing with their life, and they have established who they are. Their parents, for the most part, know them and know who they will be and what they will accomplish, even if only in the general sense.

But for anyone I know who has lost a parent in the in between ages, it has not been so clear-cut. True, they got time with their mom or dad and were able to share experiences that they will always remember, but there are so many unanswered questions that forever linger.

It's that time, a crossroads, when a life can go in any direction. You haven't really established who you are or what you will do with your life. You are still learning and being shaped greatly by the experiences you face. Much of the time you have not yet finished school, met your spouse, had children, figured out a career.... and their death before all of this has been figured out is what pains you on a daily basis.

My dad didn't get to see me be the first in my family to graduate from college. He didn't get to find out that I realized my true passion was not journalism, but traveling, and that I hope to spend much of the rest of my time visiting different countries and not reporting on local crime. He will never have met or approved of my future husband, and will not be there to walk me down the aisle or dance with me to "Butterfly Kisses." My kids will never have met their grandfather or gotten the chance to hear the stories that he was so good at telling. And today, I was reminded of all of this.