A friend’s son is suddenly on life support after an unexpected medical emergency and will not survive, I found out today. We will never again see that sweet redheaded Down’s adult winking in pride at his mom for a job well done after he’s helped out. I wanted to shout NO! No more of this, everybody just stop dying for a little while, okay? Enough!

And that my friend Jennifer is moving away.

Sometimes it’s all a bit too much.

There was an unexpected knock at our door tonight: Jennifer herself, sharing some homemade soup that she’d frozen extras of and would not have time here to finish off, offering up food, friendship, and what I think I needed most of all, an evening’s presence. We talked, she asked after Michelle, we laughed, we all swapped stories till late, we treasured every moment. She told us of one dear to her who had been in such an accident–but he had died. We examined the impacts of grief together in a safe place.

We laughed over the antics of babies–one at church today who’d toddled over to her, descriptions of her brother’s twins at the just-walking stage. New life. To life!

And I came away feeling somehow whole again in a way that had been missing these last few days.