The Jinx

Every year, my school has an opening ceremony during which all of the faculty and staff members are introduced to the incoming class of students.  In 2011, during my first year employed at the school, I missed the ceremony because of the death of a family member and the resulting sojourn to Pennsylvania for the funeral.  Fast forward 12 months and I'm thinking, count me in for the opening ceremony because (two years in a row... same weekend...) what are the odds, right? Well, on July 12, 2012, my maternal grandmother passed away.  Yet, I was still pragmatically optimistic.  My thought was, hey... at least school didn't start yet, right? Wrong...  the service date?  One month later. The weekend of (you guessed it) school opening ceremony.  Fast forward. Fast Forward. Fast Forward. And bam... Here we are, weeks before the start of the 2013 school year.  There's no way in the world a third family member can die on the same weekend.  I mean, come on.  What are we, jinxed? Mind you, no one has passed away on my side of the family during any of the months in between.  It's like we wait for the school to start each year.  Or maybe we wait to get through one last summer, I don't know.  But here we are, a full two months away from opening ceremony, and I find myself taking a mental survey of the health status of my entire family in order to figure out which member is most likely to die this year during opening ceremony.  Morbid... I know, but can you blame me?  I mean, every time my phone rang in September, I was like, "Oh My Gosh! Uncle Joey! I knew it would be uncle Joey!.... Come on kids, pack your bags. Uncle Joey's dead." It was a stressful month to be a Reyes.

Well, fast forward just a hair more... two weeks before the ceremony... and not one but both of my parents are now in the hospital due to chronic illnesses that have taken a turn for the worse.  And I'm thinking, this totally can't be real.  September is officially coombs-reyes-i'm-ready-to-die month, and I evidently won't make it to an opening ceremony until my entire family is dead.

Well... the good news is that (after a lengthy hospital stay for my dad) both of my parents checked out of the hospital with a pulse and escaped the wrath of my school's opening ceremony.  As for the ceremony itself, I was able to attend this year (whoo hoo).  However, I have to admit: Sitting in the school gym on uncomfortable folding chairs for 20 minutes while waiting to wave hello to 125 new juniors turned out to be enormously anticlimactic.  It also proved to be no match for my new fall family tradition.  Just a couple of weeks later, my 48 year old cousin Rosalyn lost her improbable (and somewhat sudden) battle to Lou Gehrig's disease.  Obviously we will miss her, and we also enjoyed the subsequent family caravan to New York as we connected with family and old friends to commemorate my cousin's life.  As for opening ceremony, I have to say that despite how mundane it turned out to be, I still found solace in the fact that I didn't miss it for a third consecutive year due to the death of a family member.  Because that would have just been creepy.