It’s been a sobering couple of days. My husband visited a friend who is dying of cancer and, with the warm, sunny weather, I ran into one of our neighbors, only to hear that his wife has been hospitalized for the last month with unexpected liver failure. Neither of these people are particularly old, nor is there anything about them that would lead anyone to say they “had it coming,” as if that is ever true.

The fact is that life is filled with pleasures and tragedies cast about at random or skillfully set in some ultimate clockwork that we can neither perceive nor understand. All I can be sure of is that I am alive this moment of this day and should allow myself to feel it fully – neither dulling the joy with fears about tomorrow nor tempering the pain platitudes of a bright future. Emotions are the stuff of life and I am grateful for the reminder, even if it was delivered in a way I didn’t want.