A close friend of our family, someone who was very much a surrogate grandmother to me when we were new in California and my own grandparents were on the other end of the country, died over the weekend. We got the news this morning.

I tweeted it, but haven’t written anything. In fact, I haven’t done much of anything today but cry and sleep. I’m not one given to crying, and I blame the elevated hormones that come with a certain time of the month as much as grief itself.

I haven’t had words all day. I haven’t had focus. I miss her, and in missing her I miss my own grandparents even more.

And yet…

She was being kept alive by machines, at the end, and was without the strength to end things herself, and would not let her children accept that burden. Her son was with her when she died. She has been released from pain.

Tomorrow, maybe, I’ll have the words for a proper post. Tonight. Tea. And rest. And escaping into fantasy literature.