Selfish

Yup, that's me. I'm a big, flabby self-centered mess.

I mean, I get that it certainly wasn't Jill's intention to set me back in the grief department. When she was going about her business this week as a licensed realtor or taking care of her kids (her son's probably too young even to understand what's happened), she certainly didn't expect to be robbed of life and transformed to spirit so soon. 32 years old, 2 little kids...it seriously makes me want to scream. But more than that is how it's not just bringing death back to the forefront in my life; it's the idea that it could happen to me or someone in my age group. And that's just unacceptable. Denial all over again. I was just starting to pass into anger and leave denial behind, and it comes back with a vengeance. This couldn't possibly happen to me. I have too much to do. I ache for her family; how will they make peace with this? It's one thing when it happens like it did to my friend Gretchen's mom...she died in a car accident last winter, but it was CT and they knew that she hit a patch of black ice and there was nothing that could've prevented it. But Jill's family may never know if she dozed off at the wheel or swerved to avoid hitting an animal or something. I've heard people calling her accident tragic, but that word doesn't begin to describe it for me. Yup, the word unacceptable covers it in my book.

I'm going to the funeral tomorrow mainly to pay my respects to Jill, who I respected as a team leader and appreciated as a friend when I knew her. But I'm also going because I know to do so will help me heal and make me a little stronger. This has been a very hard week; I backslid to crying at work when I found out on Wednesday, and yesterday I indulged in comfort food while the voices inside my head screamed at me all day for wasting my life in my cube, editing websites so people can sell things that other people don't need, contributing to the throwaway society that I find so reprehensible. The little black cloud locked itself down on top of my head, and it wasn't until I pulled out the random wrap to knit on when I got home, that I began to feel like I could breathe again. When I finish that sucker, I'm going to need to start another one, I think. There's a strangely therapeutic quality to random knitting.