Don't look...it might be headed in your direction.
That's pretty much the way death is dealt with, here. People play scary games, so that they know they're alive, not because they want to face death.
I suspect that's one of the reasons that vets from 'Nam were so blindsided, and avoided - not just because they'd been over there, but because they'd been face-to-face with the real thing, and we've been trying to pretend it ain't there, for the last century.
It's been suggested that the beginning of this was before WWI, when the editor of one of the big "lady's magazines" started pushing the "drawing room", where folks had laid out their dead, had wakes, etc, and kept the pictures of their dead, be renamed the "living room", and all that "ugly, depressing" stuff cleared out. That's when funeral parlors, having been a small business, suddenly took off.
Certainly, we've not had to face the reality of war on our soil, really, since the Civil War (unlike Europe), and so, it was easier to ignore death. After all, it always happens to other people, and usually not in your face.
So, when it does happen to someone near you, you often have no clue how to handle it. When it happens to a friend, almost no one knows how to handle it.
What right do I have to talk? I'm 51. My parents are dead, I had 10 other people die in the mid-eighties, 7 of whom were close friends. Most of whom were under 45. And then, my wife dropped dead at 43.
What I saw, after my wife died, wasn't fun. I had a number of folks who said, "they'd be there for me"...and apparently expected me, in desparation or whatever, to reach out to them. Only a couple of folks thought enough to reach out to me. Only they realized that maybe I didn't have enough anything to reach out with, and that they needed to give to me, and that expecting me to reach out, was, in a way, me giving to them.
So, how many of y'all have done that to someone? Certainly, if I've lost all these folks, some of you have, too. How many of you have stopped talking to friends who've lost someone? Why, because you "didn't want to intrude on their grief", or because, in reality, you couldn't handle it?
What does it mean, to reach out to someone in grief? It may mean listening to them telling you the same thing, over and over. It may mean being there, on the phone (good), or in person (better), as they scream or cry in agony, knowing that all you can do is to be there, and maybe hold them. Yes, it may be all you can do...but do you think they don't know?
How long do you think grief comes to "closure", to use the popular buzzword? Last year, after a shooting at a high school on a Thursday, the following Sunday, an idiot minister was talking about "closure" in his sermon.
I know someone who, in the mid-sixties, had his ex-wife, who he'd been seperated from for more than 20 years, die, and it shook him. Someone else I know, who had her husband die during a divorce, is still shaken and depressed.
Many of us, who have lost someone, will live with some level of grief for the rest of our lives. Those who think that "you'll get over it, and just remember the good times", are fooling themselves... or else, have rejected what that person really meant to them. Grief is the opposite side of the coin from joy, and without being willing to accept grief, you lose the joy you had, as well.
In fact, you lose not only the joy, you lose a part of your own personal history, that part that was shared between you and the one you've lost. Now you're the only one to remember it, and some of it you can't, or don't want, to share with anyone else.
When someone you know, who has lost someone, falls depressed, and into a spell of grief, six months, or a year, or two years, or five years after loosing someone...will you be there?
What kind of a friend are you? How strong are you...and how will you face death, when it comes to you?
The "edge" isn't out there, doing scary things. The "edge" is closer than you'd like to know - it's knowing that anyone you love, or care about, can die, for no reason at all, at any time, and often, there's nothing you can do to prevent it...and still taking the real risk, that of loving someone anyway, of offering a hostage to fortune, of opening yourself to that kind of ultimate hurt.
There's the edge.