Very odd day and not in a good way.

Today, I had been dreading a conversation that I was to have with my boss, but that wasn't the difficult part of my day (that actually went quite well). The difficulties started when I was watching Regis and Kelly. They did a make over of a women in anticipation of her being reunited with her family for the holidays. Regis and Kelly by bring her son, Christopher to her as a surprise. Oh, to be that woman. I so want to be reunited with my son . . . sooner than later.

Then tonight, I was out to dinner with a fellow Marching Chief (nice time, I must say) and we were approached by our waiter, who was wearing a neck brace. When he introduced himself as "Chris", I was instantly concerned for him. As it turned out, six weeks ago, he was in a car accident from which he survived with a broken neck and broken ribs. I told him that I was so glad that he was up and okay, having lost my son, Christopher two years ago as a result of a car accident. He described a very painful six weeks, but he is up and appears to be doing well. Oh, I so wanted that to have been my Christopher's experience.

During dinner, my mom called. My 15+ year old Golden Retriever was having some type of convulsion. We know that her days are numbered, but neither of us are ready to say goodbye again. You see, I got Abby the same year that Christopher came to live with me. Since his death, I have recounted an episode of Home Improvement where Tim is talking to his wife, Jill, about the death of his beloved boss. He is explaining that, as a result of his dad's death when Tim was just a child, he didn't handle death well. He goes on to say, "that's why we have kids instead of dogs; They last longer."

Of course, in my case, my dog, Abby, outlived my son. Further proof that this is not the way it is supposed to be. Abby was our family dog as Christopher was growing up. Even when we got the little dogs, Abby was always the dog. Teddi and Grizzley were always kind of fake (being toy poodles). It is hard to consider saying goodbye to Abby. It feels like saying goodbye again to another piece of the the life that I so enjoyed.

People are so, so different . . .

. . . and I don't know which I prefer.

I was in Publix this evening. I ran in to two sets of friends that I haven't seen since Christopher's death. The first two, a mother and grown daughter, were so sweet. Denise, the daughter, just before we parted told me how sad she was for my loss. When I saw her mom, Linda, she just had that look in her eyes that communicated her pain on my behalf. These are both people who just knew Christopher in passing from years ago when we all went to the same church.

The other friends are the parents of an only son who played baseball on the same team back when the boys were in 3rd or 4th grade. We exchanged pleasantries and I asked about Kevin. I was excited for them to hear that he was a freshman at UCF as an aspiring engineer. They asked nothing about Christopher so I am certain that they knew of his death and, yet, they said absolutely nothing about it.

I wasn't upset about either encounter; I was just struck by the contrast. I am not sure that I would have noticed either extreme had it not been for the two different types of encounters within minutes.

A friend recently told me that she thought that people's reactions often reflect their need to believe that this could never happen to them. I guess I saw that with Kevin's parents.

I'd never want to think that this could happen to Christopher . . . even though it did.