Gone for months and my newest post is about death? Well, sorry about that.

I suppose it started with a dream I had about my grandmother. She was alive and sitting in a wheelchair (which she was never in while she was alive) on the front stoop of my parents house. The plot of the dream is now fuzzy, but I remember giving her a hug, and her squeezing back. It was, of course, one of those dreams that is so tragically real that when I woke up, I felt like I had just heard the news all over again. She died when I was in junior high.

Shortly after that dream, I had the sudden realization that from this point on in my life, all the people who I love will all start leaving me. It's like the first thirty year of your life are filled with entrances and newness, and the rest is filled with comfort and loss. Recently an aunt, who is close in age to my mother, lost her battle with lung cancer and the similarity between her family and mine was unsettling.

Of course, I know it's not as black and white as that, but it is a fact of life that as I get older, I need to prepare myself for the loss of the most important being in my life - the cats, my mother, my father, my aunt, etc.

I was nearly beside myself a few weeks ago.. laying in bed and thinking about death. Inevitably Sexy, my bestest buddy and companion will live out her life. I was fraught with emotion trying to make the premature decision of whether or not I would want to be with her in the room if/when she would be put down.

I sometimes wonder if I have some attachment issues. I feel like many important and defining relationships in my life were forced to end, or at least change drastically, before their time. I never had a pet live out a natural life. Both of the pets I had pre-Sexy never lived past 5 or 6 years old. Nearly all of my closest friends are now hundreds or thousands of miles away. Therefore, I feel like so many of my relationships are so tentative and it is very scary to get too close as the pain of loss is so great.

I wonder what Nanny was trying to tell me.