Well, I got a few rows done on the "swap socks" and a few rows on the long-stalled Regia socks.

That was before my mom called. A good friend of hers (and a friend of mine) had had a stroke. She had been showing some improvement, was beginning to speak again, was getting motion back. My mom was making a lap quilt for her with a hummingbird on it (Helen's favorite thing).

Well, Helen had another stroke. She is in the hospital again, unable to have visitors. It's not at all clear if she will pull through, and if she does, how much quality of life she will be able to regain.

After I hung up the phone, I just went to bed. I've been tired this week, and have been too open to reflecting on the evil acts the human race commits, and this was just another piece of bad news piled on.

But I couldn't sleep - I kept hearing her voice, a voice that may now be forever silent, in my head. I heard the things she used to say. The way she used to say them. The particular tone of her voice, her laugh.

And I cried. I cried, probably harder than I did when my grandmother died - but then, my grandmother was very old and very sick and it wasn't unexpected. Helen had, as far as I know, none of the risk factors for stroke. So today, I look around at the people around me - I think of the people far away from me that I love - and all I see are walking eggshells, ready to crack and shatter at any moment with no real provocation.

Oddly, it is not my own mortality that scares me so much - when I'm dead, I'll be dead, it won't involve pain once it's over, and then I'll see what's "on the other side" - it's the fear that all the people I really love and care about will die and leave me here alone, with no one to talk to.

I prayed and prayed about Helen - that she would recover, that her family would have strength through this. I'm all prayed out. I'm to the point where I just say "God, whatever's going to happen is going to happen, and nothing I think about the situation appears to matter. I give up."

It's going to be a tough day of teaching. Only 7:24 and I'm already weepy.