LIFE AND DEATH ON A THURSDAY

 I know we've all experienced periods of our lives like this -- the sh-t comes at us faster than we can process it.  I'm in the middle of one of those.

My brother-in-law died the other day, and I'm in Ohio with my family for his funeral.  It came from nowhere. He was 58, healthy, but hadn't been feeling well for about a week. He dropped dead in in the parking lot of his doctor's office. Blood clots in his lungs. No one saw it coming. So now he's gone, leaving my sister, their two adult children, one grandchild, another grandchild just about to enter the picture, nieces and nephews. And everyone is wandering around the house looking lost, wondering if they should have picked up on some clue that would have saved his life, reliving the last conversations they had with him, crying and laughing in equal measure -- and half expecting him to walk in the front door with his computer bag on his shoulder.

His death hit us on an average Thursday, when we were just trying to get through whatever was on our schedule -- page proofs, football practices, job deadlines, changing diapers, starting new careers. . .  At times like these, people always say "life is too short," or "live every day to the fullest." We were doing just that. And we were still alive on Friday to do it all over again, but Bill wasn't.