When life really does suck: What the heck do you do?
When life really does suck, what do you do?
I don’t have the answers. But after seeing too much of it (misery) pass by in my lifetime, I’m still in awe of how cruel life can so often be. So often, too, it (life) kicks you in the gut when you’re already down on your knees.
Just when you need a hand up, you get a bat to the head.
There’s beauty in life, sure, don’t get me wrong. But I’m almost convinced that the bad outweighs the good most of the time. At least it seems that way the older I get.
Take, for example, one of my dearest cousins. A sweeter woman you would be hard pressed to find. Has a deep faith in God, only tends to speak good about people, even the ones who don’t deserve it, and has worked hard all her life caring for her family, her community, and just people in general.
She was pregnant with her third child when her first husband was killed in a mining accident long before survivors got big payouts from insurance companies.
Thankfully, she pulled through that, somehow survived the trauma, gave birth to her third baby and then found another good man to marry. Two more children followed.
She is in her early 80s now, but has heart problems, which her new cardiologist is trying to correct.
A Fatal Car Wreck
I just can’t say enough nice things about my cousin, one of three I’m close to, which is why it kind of broke my heart last week when I discovered that a 21-year-old drunk driver (male) lost control of his car while going about 125 mph and slammed head on into the car being driven by her youngest child, a man who just turned 52 last month.
He died at the scene.
Like my cousin said, “He was my baby.”
The drunk driver also died. A lot of thoughts passed through my head when I first learned of this tragedy.
First, I get mad at life in general, full of too much woe.
Then I get mad at drunk drivers.
I get mad at the state of Texas, which always ranks 1 or 2 when it comes to fatal drunk-driving accidents, for not finding a way to better regulate the abuse of alcohol.
Everywhere you look, alcohol is being advertised.
Bubble Heads like our lieutenant governor, former radio talking head Dan Patrick, likes to say that the 0.3 percent THC industry in Texas markets their products to kids, so all vape shops should be closed.
Of course, Dan the Ham fails to mention that the $20+ billion THC industry is giving the state’s wine industry a run for its money. So, maybe old Dan is compromised, conflicted, considering that the alky industry helps fund his campaigns. He says the same thing about e-cigarettes. They’re marketing e-cigs to kids.
What does he think the alcohol industry is doing? Almost every beer ad/commercial has hot-looking women and guys sporting six-pack abs. You’re not going to see any photos of Annie the drunk, pushing a shopping cart down the street looking for a spare cigarette butt, or Larry the lush who’s failed AA six times and wants to borrow $10 for a bottle of the really cheap stuff.
Then I remind myself, it’s not really the alcohol killing the innocent, like my cousin’s youngest son. That would be like saying guns kill people, instead of the mass shooter who pulled the trigger.
It is a fact, though, that there is not enough being said, taught, to our youth about the dangers of alcohol abuse. Or the general population, even if that probably wouldn’t matter.
Almost every family function teenagers go do during their adolescent years has alcohol on hand. Almost every city event has alcohol being served, promoted. Drunk celebrities are seen as cool, even if the photos of them peeing in their pants is airbrushed.
For my poor cousin, I just have to think, she and her family didn’t deserve this particular heartbreak. The ancient canard is so true — no parent should ever have to bury their child.
To say that life is so often unfair would be an understatement. Indeed.