They say that timing is everything. Whoever it is that they are, I’m honestly not sure exactly what they mean, but we seem to accept it as a universal truth. Timing was the overarching theme for me in second year university. I lost out on something that could have been the best or worst thing to happen me, but now it lives in “what could have been” pile. Timing is also a very convenient scapegoat for being too scared to grab life by the balls, but more often than not timing is not something we can control.
I was having brunch at the Drake Hotel on Sunday with a most excellent friend. Her grandfather has just moved into a seniors’ residence or whatever the most PC term is for it is and it’s a huge readjustment for any family when that happens. I would know: it happened to my family over a decade ago. My maternal grandfather died when I was five, and I didn’t understand why I wasn’t allowed to go to the funeral with everyone else in the limo. That was my extent of understanding of death and loss at the time. I never met my paternal grandmother and when my paternal grandfather died in Hong Kong only my father returned for the funeral.
My maternal grandmother moved into a nursing home when I was twelve. At that age you have a pretty good understanding of what aging is (even though you swear it will never happen to you), but you’re also a heinous bitch because you’re a pre-adolescent. I never quite gave my mother the credit she deserved for being so devoted to her mother’s care. I would often visit with her on Sundays, but then I’d get bored and whine to leave so we could go to the suburban mall. See? What a total bitch. When my grandmother passed away I delivered the eulogy at the funeral I was finally deemed old enough to attend. Even at a young age I’ve always been the resident writer and public speaker in my family.
So I guess I’m quite accustomed to death and loss, though it’s not something I’m particularly proud of. I’m somewhat glad that I went through those experiences before I could fully understand what it all meant. I still built the foundation of coping mechanisms which carry me through my days now.
While I learned how to handle death at a young age, I still feel like I was quite retarded (in the truest sense of the word) in handling the end of relationships. I had my heart broken for the first time when I was twenty. It’s up to your interpretation whether that’s late or not, what the hell do I know about societal norms?
Hindsight being 20/20 as it always is, I would recommend getting your heart broken for the first time at a younger age, so you know how to handle it later on in life when you should really be focusing on things like studying instead. Say when you’re seventeen and everything seems life-altering and devastating so that’s the perfect time to learn how to handle getting your heart trampled by someone you thought was “forever” and how to pick yourself back up. And believe me, life gets better from seventeen, I promise. And it’s not to say that I thought that this guy was “the one” (vom), not even close, but getting dumped always sucks.
A girl I know in university had been dating her boyfriend since grade eleven and then he broke up with her in their third year. It was her (and I would presume his) first big break up and she ended up taking a semester off university to deal. Now, I can’t say for certain that there weren’t other circumstances influencing that decision, but that seems really drastic to me. I just think that if you experience these things at an earlier age then it stings less when it happens to you in your wise, older years.
That being said, there are plenty of things that I don’t think one should do at a young age to experience it sooner rather than later. I am not encouraging twelve-year-olds to have sex. For sure it is a reality, but I am quite certain kids (because that’s what they are) at that age are emotionally prepared for what sex means. Or maybe the meaning is changing, like how pre-marital sex was unfathomable (or just don’t ask, don’t tell) at one time. All I know is that if kids are doing it, I would prefer that they were at least educated in safe sex. Abstinence only education doesn’t work. But that’s a public health discussion saved for another time.
I also don’t think people should get married at a young age. Ideally, marriage is something you want to do just once, so I firmly believe that people should take the time to get it right the first time. If I had to choose one experience that I could avoid entirely or not become really good at coping with it would have to be divorce or maybe drug addiction. Hmmm…
In and above my "wealth" of experience or at least multitude of opinions, there is one thing I’ve never experienced that many people have. My family’s home has always been the same. Sure, I moved away for university and pretty much every year after that, but never my childhood home. I don’t know how I’m going to feel when my parents finally give the place up. Moreover, it’s ridiculous the amount of crap you’ll accumulate in a place after almost thirty years.
These life milestones or collective rites of passage are things you can’t force to happen. I didn’t ask for all of my grandparents to pass away before I turned fourteen. We all make choices given the consensual situations we find ourselves in: when to call it quits in a relationship, when to have sex for the first time, when and if you and your partner get married. But we don’t live a vacuum though, there are so many factors that veer us off the perfect life course we all wish would work out. After all – it is about timing. Life plays its cards on its own schedule and isn’t that half the fun?
