At Jeffrey’s party last Friday evening, my darling sister Sue and I lamented that our Dad didn’t live to see any of his now eight grandchildren (of whom the oldest was born 26 months after his death). Some people have no children, or more rarely they die before their children are born. That’s a more heart-wrenching scenario, though it’s akin to the conundrum my daughters used to pose me: Would you rather die by being hit by a train or a truck? Tragedy (i.e. events resulting in great loss and misfortune) is universal. Every single person on this planet will, at some time in his/her life, experience tragedy. Not all tragedy’s equal. There’s a gradation. A hierarchy. At one end is death. All death’s tragedy – for family and friends at least. Then, I reckon, comes significant permanent disability – be it physical or psychiatric. To me, everything else is background music. In other words, not real tragedy. Even though, close to the event at least, we think it may be. So next time someone scrapes your car door in a parking lot, or you lose your keys or laptop or what have you, just think of my Dad who did not enjoy even one moment of the sublime bliss called grandparenthood. And spare a thought for Stieg Larsson (pictured) who died in 2004 at age 50 years, and whose Millennium Trilogy of crime novels which were published posthumously made him 2008’s second best-selling author in the world. And who had no children.
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