(no subject)

[sal_amanda]

I was planning on posting this morning.  I was going to write about how since daycare is open today, but John's off and I don't have class, we're actually going to go to lunch without Nora, and it's too bad we both have so much work to do today or else we'd take in a movie, too.  Or I was going to write about how I'm pissed that we haven't had Fall yet and how thankful I am that it's finally going to get cool out this week because I keep having to recycle the same couple of summer outfits Nora still fits into and I have all these cute cool weather outfits I hope she'll get to wear.  

But I read the news scroll this morning while watching the weather report, and I can honestly say that reading a news scroll has to be one of the worst ways to find out that someone you know has died.  

Several years ago when I worked for the American Cancer Society, I worked with this woman named Maribel.  We could not possibly have come from more different backgrounds, but we still got along famously.  I can't imagine how much time we must have wasted together just gabbing all day.  She cracked me up to no end.  We kept in touch sporadically after I left.  We'd exchange an e-mail here and there, and whenever I had a meeting or anything in that neighborhood, I'd stop in to see her.  Last year, though, I had a training right around the corner and when I called to see if she was in to visit with, I found out she no longer worked there.  I had no other way to get hold of her so I never got a chance to tell her about Nora, and I know she would have been thrilled.  

But Maribel got caught in a fire overnight and died later at the hospital.  Fires are always big news in Buffalo, for some bizarre reason I have never figured out, otherwise I might never have known.  I actually pay very close attention to the news anymore for two reasons.  One is that working as a social worker with kids naturally lends itself to former clients of yours making it in the news for one thing or another, unfortunately.  The other is that a friend of mine died in a car accident some years ago and I didn't hear about it until long after the fact, and it had been in the news at the time, but I just missed it.

It also hits me in the gut, though, because I have an unholy fear of house fires.  You know how schools always do those fire safety week things in their attempts to inform people?  I have this very clear memory of a video I was shown at school that scared the crap out of me and horrified me.  So I have what may be a slightly irrational fear of house fires because of it.  Dying in a fire just seems to me to be the worst way to go.  The more I think about it, the more horrified I become.  If I think too much about what Maribel must have gone through, I get sick over it.  

If anyone deserved a happy ending, it was Maribel.

Comments

[sal_amanda]

Thanks. Life isn't fair, you know? At least I keep thinking of all these stories and incidents with Maribel that just make me laugh my ass off.

[rockinlibrarian.livejournal.com]

I have this very clear memory of a video I was shown at school that scared the crap out of me and horrified me.

That's probably the same video they showed at our school! My best friend, who was in a different grade than I and whom I didn't know until years later, and I both independently asserted that it singlehandedly gave us an irrational a very healthy fear of house fires.

I'm sorry about your friend. I found out a girl I'd grown up with's dad had been killed in a plane crash (he was a stunt pilot) on a Breaking News Flash while watching the Olympics, and I heard another girl I'd gone to school with had been murdered in Korea on the radio news, but I never found out about anyone I knew very well that way.

[sal_amanda]

I suppose they have good intentions with the fire safety stuff, and being scared a little is probably a good thing, but I don't think we should be making our children absolutely petrified enough to be bringing that along with them into adulthood.

I wonder if the media thinks at all about how they deliver the news since it must happen all the time that people hear bad stuff about people they know that way. I'm guessing they don't. I keep joking that the worst part about it is that Maribel would really hate how her age is front and center in the reporting.

[busybusymama.livejournal.com]

You poor, poor friend. I hate to think what that must have been like, for her. It breaks my heart, and I didn't know her -- I can only imagine how you must be feeling.

I wonder if I saw the same video as you. I don't remember it, but I do lie awake sometimes planning how escape routes. Actually, now that I think about it, I have to go through a "fire drill" with the kids for this house.

[sal_amanda]

I hope they're not still showing that video at schools.