Life is like a basket of fruit?

At work, I get to interact with a lot of different people, some younger, some older. Today I was speaking with a woman whose husband is currently in a palliative care unit with cancer. She said that the head understands, that the head can accept losing loved ones, can recognize that we don't have forever, and when it's our time, it's our time. However, it's the heart that poses the problem. I always thought that was kind of funny - how we associate feelings with our heart even though all it does is pump blood. Theoretically, it has nothing to do with our emotions. And yet, where do you feel those pangs of sadness, grief, or conversely, excitement and joy? You feel it in your chest, don't you?

At one point, the woman told me that we're all like fruit: we start out undeveloped, we get ripe, and then one day we're beyond ripe and then that's it. I found this incredibly amusing. What a pleasant and interesting idea - much better than that box of chocolates concept. It got me thinking: what kind of fruit are we all? There's no question that dad was a tomato. While I jokingly made some comparisons between him and my stuffed tomato (Tommy) in my tribute, dad was truly alllllllllll tomato. He had the appearance of being firm, but he was a big softy on the inside. The perfect sidekick to any meal. In fact, dad loved tomatoes just as much as he loved chips, steak, and chocolate. Ketchup was his favourite condiment. He would put ketchup on everything, like...wait for it...rice (grossssssssssssss!). He would even add it to spaghetti sauce! We'd say, "Dad, it's already tomato sauce. Why do you need to add ketchup?" It was that simple, he just loved tomatoes. Perhaps here is the explanation for his affinity for Tommy.

And me? Am I a pineapple? Prickly on the outside, but sweet on the inside? Then again, I'm not very tropical. Would mom be a coconut with a tough outer shell? Is Stace a bunch of grapes? Extending everywhere and ready to burst at any moment and squirt you in the eye, annoyingly and obnoxiously? What are you? And more importantly, are we ripe yet?