Raylene Rankin, a member of the internationally acclaimed Celtic-country
band The Rankin Family, died after a long fight with cancer at the
age of 52 last week. I was not a huge fan, but I enjoyed her songs. What a young age to die, though...
And this Sunday, there was a radio-documentary on the CBC where she talked about her illness, and it was nice to hear her speak. But what really spooked me was to hear her speak... her body barely cold... it felt really, really real - death that is. I love to listen to people who have passed - Einstein, Churchill... all the others - it is kind of nice to imagine them alive. But when it is so soon after one's disappearance, it is so real... And death is real. I will be 50 in the spring, and a few people of my age are gone already. A colleague of mine lost his wife last year to cancer, and she was younger than I am. It seems all at once so unreal, and yet so, so real.
And I realize now that I have to get acquainted with Death. My parents will not live forever, and my friends may go with or without warning. And I may too go. Not now I hope - I want to see my daughter grow: become a child, and a teenager and a woman. I would actually like to become a grandmother, though mathematically it is improbable...
At any rate, this feeling of Death being near - not threatening, only near - is a new feeling for me. And I do not know what to make of it.
