(no subject)

[botias]

Much is made of the whole 'you'll get old and die and I won't thing' for vampire/mortal relationships. I get the social disadvantage, regular folks are going to start thinking your pairing is increasingly odd. But the people you love dying before you do thing? As far as I can tell it happens to everyone who reaches a certain age. You get older, start attending more funerals than weddings.

My great-grandmother has lost everyone from the previous generation and before. Everyone that younger folks tend to think of as their family. Mother, father, aunts, uncles, grandparents. She has lost most people from her own generation, her siblings and cousins, her husband of many decades. It would not be outside the realm of possibility for her to outlive at least one of her children. I can only assume that an aging body is not a comfort to her in those trials. Further, vampires die all the time, they just don't age. They're not exactly a safe repository for one's heart.

Comments

[appomattoxco.livejournal.com]

I very much agree. When my Dad married my Mom he warned her he was 12 year older than her and that he doubted he'd live to be 40. Mom died when she was 47 and my Dad is 73 and still in pretty good shape.

[botias.livejournal.com]

You never know do you? :) I think of this with the whole elf/mortal thing too. I watch LoTR and Elrond is counciling his daughter against loving a mortal when he himself is a widower.

We are so shaped by the world we grow up in. One reason it bugs me when younger folks dis older ones for having a more conservative world view. I wonder if older people feel very much alone in this way sometimes.

[rahirah]

Yeah. I mean, I can see that in some cases you could run into problems where the aging partner resents the immortal one, or the immortal feels tied down, or whatever--but you could get the same dynamic in a couple where one of them breaks their back skiing and ends up in a wheelchair. Some couples will break up under a stress like that, and others will overcome it and be stronger.

[botias.livejournal.com]

I hadn't considered comparison with the chronic illness/disability angle before, seems apt. You could compare it to having a beloved pet as well, and it might be apt in more ways than one considering how much longer vampires have been around generally, and the 'one link farther up on the food chain' bit. Domestic dogs and cats trigger the parenting instinct in many people, and they invest tremendous emotion in these beings that they know will be gone in a fraction of their lifetime.