All day today I kept thinking it was Friday. That’s probably because I’m not teaching tomorrow and I just have a noon time gig.  But it was weird, because I kept thinking of emails I wanted to get sent before the end of the day because who checks their email over the weekend, right?

Now, to be fair, I do. I have to, otherwise some people get annoyed if I don’t respond right away. But other people take the weekends off. And let’s not get started on the people who call in the late afternoon and then tell me to call back in the evening and then call again the next morning wondering why I didn’t call.  Gee, I couldn’t have been busy until late the night before.  No way.

Where was I? Oh right. Emails.  Friday. But it’s actually Thursday, in case you weren’t aware (though we are just three short hours away from Friday so there’s that.) Tomorrow is a big deal: Chris’s parents (that would be my parents-in-law) come to visit for approximately six days.  We have dinner reservations at Trattoria Marcella for tomorrow night and I’m really looking forward to it. Other than that I don’t know what we’re doing while they are here.  I’m back to work plus extra gigs starting Saturday so I’ll be counting down the weeks until June now…

This morning I played for a funeral of a man I didn’t know. (This happens when you are a musician. Yes, I can play the violin while crying, thanks for asking.)

I’ve started reading “The Still Point of the Turning World” by Emily Rapp. It’s a fantastic book, written by a woman who lost her baby to Tay-Sachs disease—one of those genetic diseases you learn about in high school biology but statistically figure would absolutely never affect you or somebody you knew.

The other day on NPR Terry Gross was interviewing Emily Rapp and what made me want to get her book was that she said something about how grief and loss are just as much a part of the human experience as happiness and joy—in fact, we are all going to die, and we are all going to lose people we love and people we know, and no one is immune to it. That really spoke to me.

This morning during the funeral I was thinking about that—how the speaker who basically my age, was  eulogizing his dad who died of pancreatic cancer (after a THREE YEAR FIGHT!!!) It could have been me giving the eulogy…this (barring illness or accident) will be me someday (hopefully not for a long time, I’m not wishing anything here of course!)—someday I too will be giving a eulogy for a parent—or sitting in the pew with my siblings watching another sibling do it.

And of course I cried along with the speaker. Nothing makes me cry more than when a guy is crying.

Anyway, the thing Emily Rapp was saying was, people say, oh I’m so blessed or I’m so lucky, and she doesn’t think that’s true. We all experience loss and grief, but that doesn’t mean we don’t also lead full, rich lives that are full of love. No one escapes this.

I know I went from “it feels like Friday, why do people keep calling me?” to “Hey who’s going to die of pancreatic cancer next”…but that’s life isn’t it?