Rest in peace

I turned 44 this week and I think it will be fine. 

I am vain about a lot of things, but my age isn't one of them.

I read of the death on another person I went to high school with, over the weekend. 
She makes the third in as many months.  

It wasn't anyone I knew well or was friendly with, or even thought highly of, but it feels strange to know that people of my relative age are dying, here and there, and that it will happen with greater regularity in the future.  Naturally I felt sad that someone with only about half their life lived had passed on, but the first thing I think of these days is the mother.

Oh, dear, her poor mother.

How on earth would you ever recover from losing your child?

That is what I think of, not the dead person, but rather, the mother.

In early December we got the news that Mark was ill.  That he would be ok, but that he was ill and he would require treatments and tests and waiting, and poking and that he might get sick again, and all I could think of is that it would be so much easier if I could just do this myself, because the worry and grief I felt was so overwhelming, that I would have preferred to just be sick.

Which is how I imagine a mother to a dead child feels, if only I could just do this for you...