Friday afternoon, my mom and I went into a Firehouse Subs to get Cokes (except they sell stupid Pepsi products), and I went to the television, which was on CNN or Fox News or something, to see the word on the Pope. The headline said that his condition was declining, which is what it said all day.
I said to my mom, "I wonder if this is the Vatican's April Fools Day joke."
She said she didn't think so.
I haven't really felt sad about the Pope's dying. He was 84 years old, and nobody can say he didn't have a really full life. Plus, he said from his death bed that he was happy and that we all should be, too.
Anyway, I wrote about the Pope
a few weeks ago the second time he went to the hospital. I think I said what I had to say then.
One of the things I was worried about then was that I would learn about his death from someone's LJ post, and that's not how I wanted to find out. I was in Pensacola the last two nights for a reading for Laurie O'Brian, my professor who died at Thanksgiving, and since I don't really do the LJ thing there (lest someone find mine in the history or something), I didn't have to fear LJ spoilers too much. I tried to check in with the TV as much as possible, however, and ask people when I hadn't been around one recently. I think I weirded some people out, like my dad and Meagan, by asking, "Any word on the Pope? Is he still alive?" But, I mean, how are you supposed to ask that question?
I was pulling into the parking lot at Target with Lee when my cell phone rang. It was
Apeliotes. I said to Lee, "It's Jason. I bet the Pope died." I was right.
So while some apparently learned by hearing funeral bells, I learned by hearing my cell phone ring. I'm glad.
It seems like a lot of folks don't understand the hubub surrounding this. That's okay; I've had trouble grasping the commotion when people like Princess Diana and Reagan and Hunter S. Thompson died. Everyone has someone distant and famous they care about.
RIP, JPII.
By
daylightdancer_