Glass Half Empty

Wednesday. The halfway mark. Which makes me think of a glass half-empty because that's just the kind of girl I am. The weeks go by so fast, except that the days pass with excruciating slowness.

Today, for instance, DaycareKid's lunchbox contained a can of lentil soup. Fine, right? Well, that soup smelled disgusting. I kept saying as I spooned it into him, "This is the most horrible smell!" I was wrong about that. It smelled impossibly worse after his nap when I changed his foul diaper. Blech, blech, blech. Nothing is quite as revolting as dealing with the waste products of an unrelated person, even a small person.

My husband called this morning and said, "Bad news. I just got a phone call from the school."

Now, at that point, my mind races. TwinBoyA? TwinBoyB? Academic? Did they fall on the playground?

"A third-grade girl from school died from the flu yesterday." This child attended our Wednesday night program at church. I remember her from last summer. She came to the Vacation Bible School that I coordinated at church. Cute little girl, dark brown hair with bangs and Harry-Potter glasses. Tonight, we hear that she woke up yesterday morning with breathing difficulty. She was taken by ambulance to the hospital where she remained in critical condition all day. Then she died last night.

I cannot even really believe it. Third-grade children do not just die. She has a younger sister who is a grade younger.

Time rushes by all too fast for some. But time will crawl now for this child's family.

Just another reminder to live in each moment, to savor it, to hold it tightly. If we knew the length of each person's life from the beginning, could we even stand it? We tend to live as if we have endless tomorrows. And I have to believe that we do, though all the tomorrows are not on this earth.

Sigh. Enough of this glass-half empty kind of day.