When you wake for it

Yesterday I got to the office and the parking lot was deserted, and it stayed deserted until the one other coworker in the office just got nervous and called her manager, and it turns out that one of our coworkers collapsed late last week and was diagnosed with bone cancer and given six weeks to live, and within thirty-six hours had died. His death was announced at our Christmas party on Saturday, which I couldn't attend because I was at the bookstore, and the office was closed for the day so we could attend the memorial service.

It was a hard day, yesterday. My first funeral since my grandmother's death six months ago. The numb shock on D's family's faces, on my coworkers' faces. No one was prepared for this, and everyone stumbled a bit, most of all D, who apparently hated doctors and just ignored the increasing pain until it was too late. We all flexed our mortality--to the tune of a Vince Gill song--and found it a little bit more atrophied than the last time we tried it, and it was very far from an unexpected holiday.