Weather: rainy

Reading: I'm between books right now, which is odd.

Knitting: another scarf, still avoiding the green sweater.

A busy day at work, and we had one person out. When there are only three workers, having one out is rough. This poor woman's been sick a lot this fall and winter. I hope that she gets over this thing quickly and thoroughly before she comes back to work. She generally comes back too soon and isn't recovered. She thinks she needs the money, but if she's dead, how is she supposed to use money? I told her my grandmother's theory -- not the grandma who had a birthday yesterday, but the other one -- she said that maybe you can take it with you because there are banks all over hell. Anyway, if a sick person takes time to fully recover before returning to work then they will not sick again so soon. Their resistance will be better to the next bug that comes along. Besides that, it's just plain rude to come to sick with a contagious illness. If she comes back and my other co-worker (or is that cow-orker?) gets pneumonia she could die.

Why am I thinking about people dying lately? Can it be because I just read Tuesdays With Morrie? Or did I choose that book because I was already thinking about death? it's funny, but I chose the book not knowing what it was about, I just opened it at random and was intrigued by the short passage I read. I didn't know it was about death.

Death is a part of life. Why don't we talk about it more? We are uncomfortable. We sidestep, we deny. But it exists, and everyone experiences it. Grandma, the second one, the one I mentioned above, said that she almost died one time, and she wasn't afraid of it any more, she said. She had a heart attack and heard them say, "She's gone." But she woke up and was different after that.

Grandma was there when her husband died. I was there, too, and so was my mother and Grandpa's mother. It was peaceful, no struggle. He was talking to Grandma, making one breath, then one word, one breath, one word. He said, "Honey, I'm so tired. I think I'll go home."