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2002-12-02
12:55 p.m.
Apparently, someone who worked closely with my office in some manner or other was killed over the holiday weekend in an avalanche in New Hampshire. I didn’t know him, but people are pretty shaken up over it, and, in a stroke of inexplicable genius, someone even posted a newspaper clipping about the event on the refrigerator door in the kitchen. Now, I don’t know about anyone else, but I can guarantee you that if someone I know was just randomly killed in an avalanche, I would not want to learn about it from a refrigerator door.
But that’s just me.
Having heard of the death of someone outside my own circle of friends and family for once, I am reminded of the way I always used to react to deaths when the subject came up...well, pretty much all my life. Generally speaking, my immediate reaction after hearing that someone has died is a big, fat, "So?" All these years, I’ve berated myself for this because I thought I was some sort of egotistically stoic bastard who couldn’t feel for anyone other than myself.
I was wrong.
It bothers me that they have that article on the refrigerator door. The headline blaringly screams out to you as you walk past the fridge (it’s a small kitchen, by the way), and you can’t help but notice the fact that it says, "Mass. victim of avalanche knew risks."
No shit.
When you’re climbing a snow-covered mountain, it’s generally assumed that you know risk factors are involved. This ridiculous article, though, seems almost to be attempting to justify his death by saying it was his own dumb fault and if he’d been smarter, he’d still be alive.
Jackass.
Risks are involved in all sorts of aspects of life. Most of those aspects of life are the very same aspects that make life almost tolerably livable. If you never take a risk, how fucking boring are you? If that’s the type of personality the writer of that article was trying to promote, I fear for the future state of our country. We have to take risks, whether we like it or not. Every time we get in a car, we’re taking a risk. Every time we go outside in a thunderstorm, we’re taking a risk. Don’t fucking tell me this guy would still be alive if he wasn’t willing to take a risk.
That’s bullshit.
In any case, it has occurred to me today that the reason I always feel like an insensitive whore when somebody I don’t know dies is because it bothers me SO MUCH that I just can’t handle it. It’s bad enough that I have to deal with people I DO know dying. When someone I DON’T know dies, I thank my lucky stars that it wasn’t somebody I DID know. I’m here for people if they want to talk, but I’m not going to go out of my way to pretend that this matters to me when it doesn’t. It doesn’t matter to me because if it did, I would be well on my way to my own personal, emotional avalanche.
I think it’s been made quite clear that I can’t handle any more.
