And if I died today ...

The sudden, unexpected death of a distant friend, and the way in which I learned of it, have me sitting at my keyboard, tears and mascara in my eyes, trying to figure out how once again to release this crushing loss that so frequently resides in my belly. A facebook page with the status update (June 17, 1977 - October 8, 2008) is the only way I knew she was dead and even then I didn't believe it. There has always been a part of my brain that wondered how long an online profile would continue in static even after a person had gone. I suppose these days it isn't long before it occurs to someone to update it themselves. Keeping in touch with friends and acquaintances about the date and time of your own funeral through facebook. It's strange and distant, just like the person I knew in another lifetime. Her own comments still posted at the bottom of the page, because she was there, only days ago.

And I know that pain. The one crushing my abdomen now, but also the one that would make a person go from posting pleasantries online to watching from such a great height a friends post video compilations of pictures from her life. I know that pain. And yet I can't comprehend how anyone else could feel such pain, the unbearable weight of it, the desperation to make it stop. How could they feel it and no one else know?

She's gone and I'm shaken and stunned and feeling strange about the intensity of this emotion for someone I haven't really known or seen in years. I am feeling the heartbreak of all those who had to find her, had to be jarred into this new reality without any new wisdom or understanding to get them through. What do we do now? I think, perhaps, that crushing pain never goes. It sits in the belly, under layers of distraction and even some happiness, until something shakes us enough to release it again. How does anyone cope like this?