Sunday recap...

...It's not good, and it's long

This was the first Sunday in a long while that Matt and I had no plans, so the intent was to laze around, doing nothing.

We had a bit of a blip in the morning when Matt received an unexpected email from a friend of Steve's (Matt's high school friend who lives in town and holds regular gaming days), from his email account, informing us that she was very concerned about him, as his health has been suffering. I like Steve a lot, he's a good guy with a good sense of humour and a bum physiology. For the past month, maybe, his health has taken a definite downturn. He's had to cancel several social outtings that he, himself, planned. I've taken these as a good indicator that he knows his limits. Steve isn't the sort who likes to talk about his health, 'though, and Matt really isn't one to ask, so we know very little about how his health is at any point in time. Steve sent an email following the first, asking his friends to please ignore the one from his "concerned friend". Whatever's going on in his life, he obviously doesn't want to talk about it, so we won't. For my part, I'm debating just giving him a call to let him know he can talk to me, if he chooses to, but am not sure if that would be prying or helpful. I guess I'd rather get that "out there" for my sake, ultimately...

The day ended with Matt popping out of the apartment in the early evening to pick up some take-out, during which time his mom left a message on our machine asking Matt to call whenever he got in, it didn't matter how late it was. When Matt returned, I told him his mom left a message which sounded important, so he called her immediately, to be informed that his cousin, Paxton, and his wife, Lori, had been in a motorcycle accident (each on their own motorcycles). Paxton's condition was bad enough to warrant being airlifted to Sunnybrook Hospital. Shari wanted to know if Matt would mind heading out to see how Paxton was doing, and to provide support for his aunts and uncles.

This is where I provide my little rant about how lousy Matt is with his time. After eating a quick dinner, and sitting down to watch a TV-on-DVD episode with me, he left for the hospital. At that, there was something else he was debating squeezing in before going to spend time with his family, waiting for news on their son's outcome. Of course, there are many reasons he didn't rush off -- he hadn't eaten a meal yet that day, he doesn't cope with being in hospitals very well, he was in denial about his cousin's mortality, etc. -- but I'm rather firmly of the opinion that these worries really ought to be set aside to help out the other members of your family who have much larger issues to deal with. For me, it's about priorities, and it's of concern to me that the selfish ones won out for as long as they did.

As it was, Matt arrived in time to hear about how mangled his cousin was, and to be there when his family was told that Paxton had died. He was 34.

I don't believe I ever met Paxton, so I'm in the strange position of being able to look at his death from an almost completely objective point-of-view. This will, to the best of my knowledge, be the first funeral of a loved one that Matt has ever attended and -- as calloused as it may sound -- I hope he learns from the experience. As it is, I'm worried that his views are so self-centred -- not in the, "He's a selfish bastard," way, so much as the, "He's so wrapped up in what's going on in his own head, he doesn't notice others," way -- that he's missing out on the fact that there are others who could really use his support. I dunno, I guess that train of thought is judgemental, isn't it?