Death Is a Mother-*%?@#*!

Even though we can all die at any moment, at any age, it is still shocking when someone we consider "too young to die" goes ahead and does it. This just happened to a woman in my husband's circle of friends, someone he worked with years ago. I too knew her and would see her at company functions, dinners, picnics and when I stopped in at Mitch's office.  After he left that job, I lost touch with her even though Mitch and she maintained a connection.

Single and childless, Brett was only 45, way younger than me. How come her? I feel guilty now. We learned of her passing last night, and it has blown my mind, bummed me out, laid me low, and any other cliche you can think of.

Brett lived dangerously. When I knew her so many years ago she was living in what was euphemistically called "a changing neighborhood." In Washington, D.C., that just meant "bad." She paid a high price for it when she was violently mugged one night on her way home. Then, as bad luck would have it, the same thing happened to her again months later. Eventually she took off for foreign shores. She went to Bali for a vacation, then went to Turkey to live and work, and then back to Bali to make it her permanent home. Mitch kept me abreast of her adventures posted on Facebook.

Last night he yelled out from the next room, shocked and dismayed. "Brett's dead." She had contracted thyphoid shortly after arriving in Bali last February and never got better. After a long illness and a long hospital stay, and despite several surgeries and ongoing medications, she lost the fight.

There is no punchline. It sucks. No matter what age. Today I woke up feeling like I was given a gift of a new day, but I was too depressed to open it. For that I am sorry, but really, when someone living large dies, you feel it.