Day 169

Sometimes other peoples' pain overtakes me.  The sadness eats my consciousness until I'm a bumbling half-a-brain fumbling through my day.  Sadness replaces my appetite and my ambition.  It's too much for me.

It can be a stranger on the street or a disaster half a world away.  I have to stop myself from thinking about it or it will take over.  There's so much everywhere.  How does one avoid it?

A friend passed away yesterday.  More of an acquaintance than a friend, I guess.  Though I saw him five days a week for almost eight years, I can't say I knew him well.  He was the quiet one of the group.  Sometimes we talked about his fight against his own illness.  I guess we had that in common, though his was potentially fatal and mine, not so much.

He died quietly in his sleep of a heart attack unrelated to the long battle he had fought which, by all accounts, he was winning.  No one expected that he wouldn't wake up, too young, too healthy.  It was a total shock to me when I found out this morning.

I can't say I understand why I can't get over it.  Maybe I'm older now and I know what it means to lose someone.  Maybe I know what his mother and siblings and nieces and nephews are feeling today.  How hard it must have been for his closest co-workers who spent eight hours staring at an empty chair.  Actually, I don't know.  I know a fraction of their pain.  I can't imagine what this feels like.  Maybe that's why...