It seems like something really sad or tragic must’ve happened to someone at Mom’s work today, because otherwise, the conversation she’s trying to start makes no sense at all: Just now during dinner, Mom made an incredibly morbid, super unprompted comment about how you never know when your time will come.
Whoa, where’d that come from?!? We’re just trying to enjoy our chicken piccata here, Mom!
We were all just having a normal dinner, talking about how Dad is going to plant flowers in the front yard this weekend, when, just moments ago, Mom did this big, dramatic sigh and said, out of nowhere, “You know, I never really think about it, but your time could come any day. It really could.” Everyone was silent for a while after that since there was no clue as to where it came from, leading us all to believe that one of her perfectly healthy coworkers at the bank must have had an aneurysm in their sleep or gotten hit by a drunk driver or something. Mom is usually pretty upbeat, but clearly something bad happened that’s got her contemplating her mortality, because after that comment she went on for a minute or so about how it doesn’t matter how healthy or good of a person you are, it can all be gone in an instant.
Jesus, Mom. Kinda being a buzzkill….
After making her weird, out-of-nowhere comment, Mom sort of just sat there staring solemnly off into space for a while, making it pretty damn hard for the rest of the family to resume normal dinner conversation as if nothing happened. It’d probably be good if one of us were to ask Mom if everything’s okay and try to offer some support, but no one was really anticipating having to step up and do something awkward like that today, and quite frankly, dealing with this should really be Dad’s responsibility. And while all of us absolutely do want to know all the juicy, morbid details of whatever sudden death Mom is alluding to, the payoff of getting into it probably wouldn’t be worth it, since she might start crying and make things even more uncomfortable for everyone than they already are.
Sorry, Mom, but we’re all probably just gonna steer clear of this one.
Historically, Mom’s always been pretty good at compartmentalizing, so here’s hoping she’s able to quickly bury the sad details of whatever tragedy happened deep in her subconscious and go back to being her usual chipper self by dinner tomorrow. That’s probably what whoever died would’ve wanted.
