"Stop being so French. Today is going to be just fine. It's just chilly!" I said with a saccharine smile and proud that my American optimism kicked his sour French attitude's boney ass.
Just as we were 5 minutes from our destination, the long light before crossing Rivoli which can keep you waiting for what feels like eternity, the sky opened up and started to poor ice cold rain on us. Standing on the corner drenched and hunched over with our heads down to avoid our faces from getting wet, my wool sweater starting smell like a wet rat and my ballet flats feeling like wet squishy sponges, Séb turned and looked at me again, "As I said, today feels like it's going to be a bad day." Sebastien repeated victoriously a little louder as he was competing with the sound of the heavy rain. Really? He actually wanted to win that debate? I generally aim for good days, but again, I'm American, we're obsessed with being happy. A concept that perplexes the French to great degrees.
While my day on a whole went fine with nothing too challenging being personally thrown my way, the news about Steve Jobs had floored me. All of the photos of Apple products and actual real apples on my facebook news feed suddenly made sense. I'm slow sometimes.
How sad. Truly. I recently took an interest in his daughter Lisa because she writes, has a blog as well as a fascinating story of being somewhat estranged from her father until she was a teenager where her and her mother were living on welfare. This was a story that I found myself googling several times this summer because I find her intriguing. Unfortunately, I hadn't been able to find too much, just some articles in Vogue and a few posts on her abandoned blog.
With this news freshly broken, I can't help but think of my uncle who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer last year. It pains me to know that he is reading about the passing of Steve and is undoubtedly thinking about his own fate. Having lost my father to throat cancer at 55, my aunt to bone cancer at 53 and my other aunt to a fatal hit and run at 27, I'm certainly no stranger to losing immediate family. I can only imagine how his daughter Lisa and his three other children are feeling. There is no pain like the loss of a parent, the only worse pain - per my grandmother who has lived through it twice- is the loss of a child.
This image is what did it for me, where I could feel the impact of the loss:
It reminds me of a little jewelry box my father gave to me on my 23rd birthday when he knew that he was dying and inside was a photo taped on the top half of him waving goodbye to me. My heart is with Laurene Powell, her children and Lisa Jobs today.
