Ch. 5, Part 3: Time of Crisis

(Continued from Part 2.)

Given that recent years presented to us the deaths of our two cats, and our children growing up, I can only wonder how Shark was taking it all.

I mean, I didn't want to ask him, since it didn't feel right to do so. I was taking it as best as I could, but...

With him, you had to be careful. Things could get turbulent with him.

I tried to cheer him up with other events coming up, like say...

His own birthday?

I waited until the kids were in school and asleep, and I made it so it was just me and Shark, celebrating his happy birthday.

Or it was supposed to be happy, anyway. After he made a wish, and blew out the candles, he started saying he hoped it'd come true.

I know a lot of people say that, but the way he said it, well...he didn't sound very confident. And in fact, he actually opted not to eat any cake. He told me to save it and give it to the kids for dessert tonight.

There was a reason he was acting like that, actually. 

Turned out he got springboarded into a Midlife Crisis. You know, where most people realize they won't live forever, and basically start freaking out about their looks and buying expensive crap?

That was Shark for a while. He got so difficult to reason with. If I tried to tell him he still looked hot, and he did, and still does, he'd go berserk and tell me I was just saying it to be nice.

Keep in mind, he sometimes went off on a tangent early in the morning. Early in the morning meant I was very crabby, so getting compliments out of me wasn't easy.

But damn, did he get emotional. 

It was 'getting fat' this, and 'getting old' that. The fact our second eldest kid was about to leave home wasn't helping matters.

Personally, I thought he was aging like fine wine. So he was getting older. He was still pretty damn hot.

But I just couldn't convince Shark of that. Believe me when I said I tried.

As for the kids throughout all this, well...

For all they knew, one dad was losing his mind, and the other dad was trying to help him. But surprisingly, they were pretty good about it. 

Amaranth found herself a new beau, and talked pretty much nonstop with him. I kind of knew him, I worked with his mom.

Or was it his step-mom? I don't really remember.

He and I never really did formally meet, because Amaranth told me she didn't want to bother me and Shark.

Apparently, she didn't want to remind her dad that he was getting old, by dating someone.

Lot of good that did. As soon as her birthday hit, well...he hid how he really felt, by not whining about it.

But hey, even I felt sad that she was going to be leaving us. We'd already seen her sister leave, and now she herself was going to start her own life.

Almost as soon as the candles were blown out, she was already preparing to leave. It seemed pretty...informal to me.

As soon as she received her diploma, she flew the coop. Last I heard from her, she married that guy she was dating, and adopted her own little girl.

Personally, I wish I were there to see it happen. Shark and I were grandparents now, and I never even got to see her kid.

It was almost as if she went from being my daughter, to becoming a complete stranger. But then, I probably only have myself to blame for that issue.

And Shark...he got all worked up over now having two kids out of the house.

I intend to fix that later on, and go see how they're doing, after this. I just want to see my first-born grandkid before I go, you know?

But basically, whenever I finally managed to make Shark feel better about his predicament, something would always come up and upset him all over again.

Not even our anniversary seemed to keep him happy, after she left.

Well, at first he was happy when that day came. I mean, I just wanted him to remember how special the day was to us.

No midlife crisis, no wanting to get a mohawk or expensive car, just him and me out for a night on the town.

Of course, all we really could do was dinner and a movie. Then again, there's really nothing much else to do in Twinbrook.

I really just wanted to make the night more romantic for him, so I topped it off with a walk through the park.

And who did we happen to meet there but our brother-in-law DeAndre. To be honest, it was kind of confusing seeing him out at that hour.

Not only that, but Lolly and Sheldon were nowhere in sight, so he was alone. When we asked him, he said even he wasn't sure why he was outside on his own. He just said he felt drawn to the park for some reason.

 But I guess...our questions were answered shortly after we met up with him.

Apparently, the reason he went to the park, was so that he didn't have to worry about his family at home seeing him croak.

I knew DeAndre's time was short, but still. To see him actually die right then and there, right in front of us...

It was just like a slap to the face. I remember standing there, shocked, and Shark just started crying again.

When DeAndre was gone, I tried reassuring Shark that it was all right. That the next chance we got, we'd go and see Lolly and Sheldon.

It must've sucked for Lolly, having to get the news that she was a widow now. I don't think Shark wanted to break the news to his sister, but someone had to do it.

I just couldn't believe that the day started out amazing, and ended with both of us crying our eyes out.

Still, I knew that DeAndre was in a better place. But it really didn't make Shark feel any better.

After a day or two of mourning, Shark came up to me at home, and just hugged me, apologizing for how much of an ass he'd been lately.

All I told him was that he really needed to quit apologizing. So he was having a Midlife Crisis, big deal. A lot of people his age had them.

Yeah, I had been at my wit's end trying to make him feel better. But he told me that he only wished it didn't take the death of someone we cared about, for him to realize he still had a good amount of years left.

He told me he knew time was short, and he promised that he'd stop being a big baby and calm down about all of it.

I was glad he was going to calm down, because, well...

Someone in this relationship had to be well-adjusted. And given what happened later on, it was pretty obvious it couldn't be me.

(A/N: Chapter 5, completed.)

(Trivia fact: for reasons that I'm not entirely sure of, Sinbad didn't have a Midlife Crisis. I'm still not quite sure why Shark got one, but Sinbad didn't. Stroke of fate, I suppose.)