The other night, I was startled to discover at 5 AM that my best friends mother had passed away at the age of 80. Just a few days ago, she went into the hospital because she was having chest pains and once the heart specialist put a camera into the valves around her heart, they discovered that all of them were around 80-90% blocked. The doctor couldn’t believe that she was still alive and walked into his office. They were to perform immediate heart surgery but postponed it for a few days because they discovered that she had weaker than normal lungs. Early Monday morning, she went in for surgery. The surgery went well as it involved taking veins from her foot and using those for a heart bypass. She was under the knife for six hours. Once it was over, she was groggy but conscious enough to speak a few words. During that night in recovery, while everything seemed ok, the world lost a great woman. The doctors tried for 30 minutes to bring her back but to no avail. As of now, no one knows what happened and the doctors are flabbergasted as to her death.

I’ve been trying to help support him through this troubled time in his life and it’s even more troubling to know that the house he lived in with his mother will now be silent with only himself to occupy it. I believe that for him, the silence will be deafening. She was quite a quilter and now he begins the process of celebrating her life and performing the necessary tasks of cleaning up (organizing, donating, and throwing items away) after a family members passing.

You know, you go through life and no matter what, you can’t seem to get away from death. Life moves at a fast pace but deaths of family members and friends or people that you have connections with act as stop signs. Times to stop and reflect on life, both theirs and your own.