One Year

Today (or yesterday, since now it's after midnight) was the one year anniversary of my old high school friend Shannon's death at the age of 40, just a few weeks shy of turning 41.  It was cancer, which she battled for the last several years of her life.  I don't know if her two daughters ever knew her as "not sick".

Sure, I hadn't seen her in AGES, since the early 1990s, but it was nice to know she was out there being a wonderful wife and mother.  For one year now, the world has been a little emptier without her spark in it.  I'm sad for her husband and her two kids, none of whom I've ever met.  How has the year been for them, I wonder.  My own mother was taken at about that same age, but it was sudden, in the blink of an eye.  Would I have wanted her to hang on, miserably fighting a battle that she could not win, just so I could see her more?  I don't know.  I feel for Emma and Lauren, and for Scott, who had to be devastated to see his beloved wife fight so hard for so long.

And most of all, I remember my old friend Shannon, and hope she is at peace, free of pain at last, and able to somehow see her daughters as they grow.

With all the ways I've abused myself over the last 25 years, how can I be outliving so many beautiful people?!?  It makes no sense at all.