Twas Brillig

Yesterday morning, I heard sirens.  My kids were thrilled and we ran out the back door to see where they were coming from.  What little boy doesn’t love a firetruck or an ambulance?

We couldn’t find the source of the siren, so we came back inside and pretty much forgot about it, until a neighbor showed up a few hours later to say, “did you hear?”

“Hear what?”

“Scott died last night.  In his sleep.  He went to bed and never woke up.”

He was 39 years old.  He leaves behind a beautiful wife from Korea (who doesn’t have any family here) and their 15 year old daughter. 

No one saw this coming.  They’re still trying to figure out what exactly happened.  It’s currently being blamed on a switch in medication, but that’s just speculation right now.

We’re all in a bit of a state of shock right now.  It makes me painfully aware of my own mortality, but more especially of my hubby’s mortality, which is more essential, more precious than my own at this point in my life.

Things are being arranged so quickly.  I’ve taken meals in to the widow–which feels very strange.  (”I’m sorry your husband died.  Here’s a casserole.”)  I’ll be setting up tables and chairs and providing food at the funeral.  It’s all very surreal.

This is not my loss.  I hardly knew the man.  I’d seen him around and I’d seen him at church and (for those of you who speak “Mormon”) he and Hubby were Home Teaching companions, though  it was a new enough assignment that they’d never actually gone together.  Still, there was a connection there, slight as it was.

It’s not my loss, but it’s someone’s loss.  How can she be coping?  And the fact that it happened in my own backyard makes me feel strange and insecure–like when you see a spider crawling on the floor, and for the rest of the night, you’re just certain that there’s a spider on you.

This is not my loss, but I feel a little bit of it too.  I’ll be holding my loved ones a little closer today.