Life support

I'm sorry - is the text blurry on your screen too, or is only my face leaking uncontrollably in response to tonight's Grey's Anatomy?

I swear, that show gets me in the weirdest places, for the oddest things. If you haven't watched it yet and you plan to, don't read any further, because I'm about to spoil it for you.

So, after 6 or 8 episodes, George's father finally dies. While that in itself was emotional, what broke my heart was the way all three brothers and the mom have come to develop as their own cast-within-a-cast, a flawlessly functioning and yet ultimately flawed family that truly loves and supports each other through the worst of times.

I am an only child, and only recently have I started thinking about what if? What if something happens to one of my parents? If I'm older, I will be by myself in the hospital room, most likely, or sharing the moment with someone close to one of them but not part of my genetic makeup, the tightly-knit unit full of private jokes and a lifetime full of private moments that George and his family share. I know that really, the question is not what if, but when, and for that, I am simply glad I do not have the answer.

My uncle lost his father this week. Huck was 93. And while my uncle (who is my uncle through marriage to my father's sister) appears to be an only child like me, no less than 25 people from our family alone will be attending the funeral tomorrow. And that's the other issue tugging at my heart strings: what's just as unfair as not having any siblings is that I might not have that "marriage" side either, and thus another generation of kids and grandkids that they are so lucky to have. Marriage seems so far off to me, and with that, kids seem like something I will only be lucky to have in my future.

This is something I have struggled with a lot since I have turned 30. Weirdly, in the same birthday that it took for me to fully appreciate being single, I also developed a sensitivity to that proverbial biological clock I had always heard about but never thought would tick loudly enough in my direction.

There are situations we are born into and situations that we create. Choices we can make and choices that are made for us. Being an only child was a situation that was created for me. I can't blame my parents; to do so would be be to ignore the bigger issue that their marriage wasn't working, and they were rather selfless as not to bring a second child into their confusion.

Having kids or not having kids, at this point, is increasingly seeming like a choice that is going to be made for me. The more years I go without getting married, the less likely I will be to have a child. To do so without a spouse - I don't think I would. I wouldn't intentionally inflict on a child what I feel has been put upon me - the responsibilty to take care of a parent 30, 50, 65 years down the road - not without a partner as support system. Nevertheless, I don't like having decisions made for me, and I feel like this one is happening while I watch, helplessly, from the sidelines.

Any show that takes place in a hospital is obviously going to focus on life and death. I guess what I am mourning right now is not George's father, but what I view as the death of my own options, slowly taking place without my consent.