make no mistake where you are

A. died yesterday. I remember feeling like this at C's mother's funeral, only having met her once or twice, not knowing her well enough to be truly directly affected, and yet still feeling, sitting in a room filled with people who are wracked with grief, my own kind of pain. Grieving has a ripple effect and when people you love are hurting, you cannot help but feel their pain alongside them. I didn't know A, but I care about the people who miss her. And I feel their pain through them. And I cannot help but feel the heavy weight of my own mortality pressing against my spine, and that of my own loved ones, when I think of young mothers dying and leaving behind babies and broken hearted husbands. I'm scared this is going to happen to T, her husband, her baby.

They gave us pamphlets about coping with loss; it talked about the typical stages that teenagers will go through. I read it - and noticed that my own stages of grief in my losses have been similar. More like a teenager than an adult. Like them, I feel betrayed by my god that this kind of thing happens in the world. I am overcome by feelings of helplessness and fear that this will happen again and again in circles growing tighter and tighter to my core. I feel Beckett's existential gloom.

This is the second death since I started thinking of it. I don't want a third one. Please.

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I am torn between trying to change the culture and trying to fit into it. I don't really like the pre-existing culture in which there is so much noise, so little listening. So little respect for one another. Or so it seems. One of them told me I shouldn't assume that interrupting and cutting one another off was rude, because here, like in cultures where it is considered polite to burp to show appreciation for a good meal, rudeness and respect are shown differently. While I can appreciate that the culture is different, it bothers me a great deal.

And this is where I have to decide how to proceed and I'm struggling a bit with knowing what I should do. If I had, in fact, moved to another country where respect and rudeness truly were demonstrable in different ways, then it would be smartest for me to learn the ways of the people around me and fit in as much as possible - or at least accept what was going on around me. And that is what I would do. That is what I have done.

But here, now, I don't know whether I'm a temporary guest (requiring me to fit in with them) or whether it is my home (requiring them to fit in with me). If I knew the answer it would guide my behaviour.

As it is, knowing nothing, I am floating around unsure of myself. Sometimes I feel like I'm making progress, and sometimes I feel like I'm getting nowhere.

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