The vasty deep

SPOILER ALERT: This post may be depressing.

One of the things that has surprised me about settling into my forty's is the number of times I've spent comforting my parents when a friend of their's dies. My parents have a lot of friends; they are in their 70's, and unfortunately over the last couple of months, they've lost a lot of people close to them.

A recent conversation with my father:

ME: How's Mr. Condon doing? (Back story: right before Thanksgiving, a dear friend of my parents, a contractor who had rebuild their kitchen about 18 years ago, had been diagnosed with Kidney cancer. Being 82, he had decided not to undergo surgery.)
DAD: Oh, he died.

Then there was silence. The last couple of times I had asked this question when I talked to my dad is that his friend was still in the hospital, but was doing ok.

A couple of weeks later, when I was in San Francisco with my mother for Erin's baby shower, she casually mentioned that Mrs. MacVicar had died. Being in her late 80's, she was one of my parents' older friends. She hadn't been sick, so it was a bit of a shock. A couple of weeks later, my dad told me that Mr. MacVicar had died. He had been my father's barber for 20 years. A couple of years ago, my mother made my dad stop seeing him, because he would cut and talk and cut and talk and talk and talk, and my father would come back with a very choppy cut with very little hair left. He really enjoyed talking to Fred though.

Before the recent spate, in October, there was also Mr. Fagan, one of my parents' oldest friends from the Irish crowd. He died of a long battle with Prostate Cancer. His death was somewhat of a comfort - he had been sick for six or seven years. Shockingly, two months later in the days leading up to Christmas, another friend from the NJ Irish crowd, Mr. Lynch, died suddenly at home.

They have lost five friends in six months. When I was up visiting my dad the weekend of my nephew's and my birthday we were talking about it. After a draining conversation, he simply said, "Kerry, I'm just tired of going to funerals."

Last week, my cousin Maureen sent an email about my Aunt Totta, her mother. She had been diagnosed with Bladder Cancer. She's 78, and she's my last aunt/uncle on my mother's side. The other three, my mother's brother and sister, and my mother's sister's husband, have died of cancer. There is way too much of that disease in my extended family. She's doing well right now, but I keep thinking it's just a matter of time.

Right now, I've very thankful for my parents' health. Even considering my dad's heart attack from two years ago, they're both relatively healthy.

gadgets

I have a thing for gadgets. I'm just really intrigued by things that can make certain tasks easier but are, in reality, totally unnecessary. I could be wrong, but it seems like a truly American thing to get the brightest minds together to come up with devices to make life in the US even more convenient, as long as you have the means to buy them For example, the image to the left is an egg topper, that allows one to remove the top of a hard boiled egg without burning one's fingers.

I recently received an electric toothbrush for my birthday, and was so excited that for a moment I thought that this was the best present I'd received in a long time - dental hygiene is high up on my list. I'm convinced that my teeth are so much cleaner, and that my dentist is going to be so happy with me the next time I see him. This is what the best devices do; they make people believe that machines are the way to better living.

Other devices that are in my future (that is, once I'm returned to full time work...):

The KitchenAid stand mixer: A friend once told me that this kitchen tool is one reason to get married; it at least has to be the number one item that brides (and some grooms) put on their registry. It's an expensive item, and probably not one that many people receive as a gift. The last guy I dated had one, and I really took it as a sign that things were going to last - he knew how to cook and appreciated well made gadgets. Alas, that was not the case, so maybe I should take the stand mixer off its pedestal. I don't have room for it anyway.


The at home seltzer maker: A couple of my friends have one of these, and it's just a brilliant idea. I love seltzer, but don't buy it often since bottles quickly lose their fizz. The Europeans (or at least the Irish) were way ahead of us on this invention. When I was younger and my family took a vacation to Ireland, one of my parents' friends had one of these, and I've wanted one ever since (that was 1985). Fresh seltzer all the time. You can also carbonate anything - imagine fizzy coffee...luckily, this item doesn't take up much counter space.

Now if only Apple and Verizon would work things out, I'd finally have an iPhone. I may need to look into the HTC Incredible or the Google Nexus One.