Life Can Be Tough
I’m sure that comes as no surprise to any of you - that life can be tough.
Some people just go through periods of life where one wave after another of sadness hits them.
Like some friends of ours.
Last year they were forced to sell some of their farming land due to years of drought and low grain prices.
Now this year they have to watch while others around them reap the best crops ever since in the area (sadly, this is happening to 2 different families we are close to right now).
Just before Christmas one of their adult sons (who we are also friends with), was in a nasty car accident where his ute collided head on with a truck on a stretch of dirt road not wide enough for 2 vehicles (annoyingly enough, after years of complaints from locals, the day AFTER the accident the council came out and widened the road - grrrr).
He should have died but was miraculously spared. In another miracle, his young wife was supposed to be in the passenger seat (which was completely decimated in the accident) but was running late so he’d left her home and told her to bring another vehicle into town.
His recovery will be slow but at least he will recover.
The mother has been driving back and forth between home and Adelaide (he’s home now) to spend time with her dying mother.
Just when they were expecting a phone call to say her mother had passed away, they instead got a shock phone call to say her husbands father had passed away from surgery complications. Surgery that was supposed to have a 90% success rate.
As our friend said, in this day and age you think of 90% success rate as 100%. Nobody thinks they’re going to be in that 10%. It’s almost a fictional 10% isn’t it?
Not that his dad was young. He was in his 70s. But I know what it’s like to be watching one family member slowly slip away from this world and have another up and pass away suddenly. It’s a shock that’s hard to come to terms with.
To make matters even more complicated, the guy was 700km away from any of his family where he has been travelling to work for the past year or so to bring in money for the family to live on.
With dad away half the time and mum also working to keep things afloat, they have been a family in crisis for some time now.
And I particularly feel for their 11 year old son. The youngest. A kid who struggles to express himself and has what appears to me to be a very low self esteem.
A kid who is very close to his older brothers. Who took his brothers accident very hard. So much so he couldn’t stop vomitting when he first found out.
A kid who’s “Puppa” helped replace his dad when he was away from the family working.
A kid who has to face 2 funerals in the space of a week (the maternal grandmother has also passed away).
Sometimes life just seems more tough for some than others.
It just doesn’t seem fair.
And I feel so powerless to know what to do to help.
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Just be there for the eleven year old. Maybe offer to have him join you at your place or for an outing? When LC’s elder brother killed himself at the age of 20, it was his friend (my brother) who hung around and asked him out to a few events that kept him going, made him have something other than grief to think about.
Life is the unfairest lottery there is.
Just be there as much as you can, it’s all you can do.
Just be there. It’s surprising how much a phone call for no reason can make a difference. Or an invitation for a few hours out. Sometimes a chance to escape reality and pretend to be normal for a while is the best thing that can happen to you in times of great stress and grief.
Prayer, Prayer and more Prayer.
That really is a lot to deal with, and terribly sad. I think being around, and expressing your concern and love, and letting them know that you are there to help in whatever way needed, is as much as you can do (and can make all the difference).
Just read your prior post, and I hope that you are feeling better too.