I'm so sorry sj.

Thanks, DJ. L is a friend from high school and not someone that I have been very close to for a while, but I have been following all her excitement on being pregnant and preparing for her baby on facebook, and I feel so awful for her.

sj, that is incredibly sad. Much peace~ma to your friend and family.

{{DJ}} Your cousin Bo sounds like he was a real character and I can't imagine a better send-off for him that what your family has planned.

Cass, admit it, you're a natural born firestarter. We should just send you out with an extinguisher strapped to your back and a red box saying PULL IN CASE OF EMERGENCY. Very glad you and your dad deplaned safely. Like you, I love the smell of jet fuel, but not in that kind of situation!

I love at least we`re not on fire. It`s a very handy phrasing. I`m glad you and your dad are okay, though. Mobility issues and airplanes are sometimes unmixy things, so I`m glad for your and his safety.
 
Oh, sj, how hard. My friend who went through that a couple of years ago is pregnant again and she`s been very very quiet about it on facebook this time.
 
Hard to have to suffer that loss, DJ, but that sounds like a great memorial.
 
I have hit that delicate point of equilibrium between cold meds and sickness where I am both lucid (not feverish) and not miserable with symptoms. Yay, except that means I am now bored. Play Sims or knit?

Oh, that's terrible, sj. I'm sorry. And I'm sorry about your cousin, DJ, and it looks like you're honoring him in such a way that he'd wish he were there.

sj, it is such an awful feeling to be close to someone when something like this happens.

Years ago, the very, very good friends of my boyfriend were expecting twins. For some reason, a week before the projected end of an otherwise totally healthy pregnancy, somebody decided that they needed to do an amnio. As the result of a tragic medical error, both babies died.

I had no idea what to say. What can you say? So, I cooked. A lot. Perhaps too much. That couple and their toddler son didn't have to cook for about a month by the time I slowed down.

There is just no understanding an event like the one sj's friends are coping with.

Ultimately, I've taken on a notion I got from an episode of "Life Goes On", of all places.

One of the characters has a miscarriage and an older man who clearly loves her, plays a wooden flute outside her window. He explains that, during the war in Asia, he learned that sometimes a soul just isn't meant to stay. He played to flute to accompany the soul on its way.

It chokes me up every time I hear about a loss like this and, though I don't know for sure if souls go anywhere, I'd like to think so.

So, I'll say to that dear little baby, Godspeed Sweetheart. And to the parents, may your broken hearts hold together and some time heal enough to keep them going.

It's really his widow who has decided how he's going to be celebrated. Were it up to certain other members of the family, there'd be a stupid ceremony at a church no one went to followed by an hour and a half drive back to where the whole thing should have been in the first place.

Then it is abundantly clear he married the right woman.

There can't be a BoRita without a Bo and Rita.

DJ, I'm so sorry.

sj, I'm very sorry for your friends.

I had no idea what to say. What can you say? So, I cooked. A lot. Perhaps too much.

That's not a bad impulse.