Thoughts about dying

For some reason I was thinking this weekend about people my age and having our parents die. I’m almost thirty, as is my husband, and as are most of our friends, which puts most of our friends’ parents around 50 or 60. Now, that doesn’t really seem that old, but I work in a funeral home, and it is definitely not uncommon for people of that age range to die, which made me wonder: Which of our friends’ parents (or our own) are going to die soon? I mean, statistically some of us will be affected by the ‘early’ death of a parent, right? If not there wouldn’t be that many cases in the funeral home in that age range. Actually, back in November the mom of my best friend in Jr High died, and somehow they chose the funeral home I work in, not even knowing I worked here. She just dropped dead one day of a deep vein thrombosis or something, and was my dad’s age. I mean, people my parents’ ages have dead parents, so they have to die sometime, and I guess it is going to start soon, or has already. Does that make any sense? I’m not even sure why I’ve been thinking about it, but I have come to the conclusion that I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do when it happens. My friend whose mother died in November, well there really wasn’t much I could do. I just sorta cried on my friend while she cried on me. Looking back it seems selfish, or self-centered to have cried, but I figure I would have cried even having not been the funeral director handling the services, as this woman, for a few years, was like a second mother to me, and honestly, I didn’t know what else to do but cry. There are times when I realize something: No matter how good I am at my job I can’t do the one thing families wish I could, bring their dead relative/lover/friend back to life. It makes me feel a bit inadequate sometimes, even though I know that it’s silly to feel that way, I mean, I am doing the best I can to make everything okay, and I love doing that, it just seems strange a times, doing less than what people wish I could do, however unrealistic those wishes might be.