They say that's the way life goes...

I was awakened this morning by my cell phone- the obnoxious "whistling wizard" tone signaling that I had received a text message. At first I ignored it. Anyone who knows me, knows me well enough to know that I am neither coherent, nor pleasant, nor functional before 8AM. Then two minutes later, another message. Somewhere in my semi-alert state something triggered in my head that two messages early in the morning means something is not right. Bad news always seems to go hand in hand with bad timing.

The week I was laid off, my friend Terri from Bible Study was on vacation. She was still away the day that the group got together for a surprise lunch for me. The week that I left for Poland, they sent an e-mail around that Terri wasn't feeling well. When I came back, I read in an e-mail that she had been taken to the emergency room and had been admitted to the hospital. My former friends didn't seem to think this necessitated a phone call. (Yes, that is a trace of bitterness in case you missed it. I'm trying, I really am... but being forgotten by your friends is a hard thing to swallow.) I learned that Terri was diagnosed with an very aggressive form of full-blown leukemia. She was admitted to Hershey Medical for 8 weeks of intensive chemotherapy. Halfway through they had to stop because she had an infection and was too weak to handle the chemo. Though the last report I had received, she was doing better.

My text messages this morning were from two friends telling me that she died of a brain hemorrage last night.

Death has a funny way of sucking the life out of your heart. Time seems to be frozen, and yet it rushes by you in a blur. It's a curious place of your brain screaming "no" in denial and yet simultaneously your heart is breaking.

I didn't cry. I didn't yell. I didn't do anything. Part of me wanted to throw my phone across the room. But the other part realized that doing that couldn't erase the words burned into my mind.

The hardest part of death is coming to terms with the fact that someone you know and love is gone. I mean GONE. There are alot of people that I miss. Family that I don't see nearly as often as I wish. Friends that have moved, former friends from work, and friends I've left behind over the years. But yet, it's not quite as painful because even though I miss them- they are somewhere. They are still out there, only a phone call, e-mail, or car ride away. But missing someone who you know is not anywhere on this earth is a whole different story. It's hard to take Terri out of the "missing someone who is somewhere" category, and put her into the "missing someone who is gone" category. I've been thinking about her on an off all day today. It doesn't seem real.

What scares me is that I think I've become numb to grief. Since Emily died, she has become the measuring stick for all future griefs and hurts. And anything that falls short of that imaginary line on the stick gets shoved into a little compartment somewhere. Things like the loss of a job, the loss of a group of people that I thought were friends, and now the actual loss of a friend still don't seem to register high enough on the scale.

I think that makes me heartless. I didn't say a word to anyone today about Terri. Because saying it means I have to deal with it. And dealing with it makes it real. I think part of me is still stuck in that moment of trying to pretend I never saw that message. Perhaps I am in denial. Or perhaps I am simply crazy.

Whatever I am, I am for sure and for certain one thing- I am sick and tired of death. They say that's the way life goes. I say it sucks.