context and empathy

I realized something last night thinking about my grandmother and her husband. He died on Monday and she is now in hospice and things are not looking great for her. I know I always say I don't believe in regret, but our letter writing campaign is maybe only a year old and I should have started sooner. But something I realized recently that I would modify from one of my better sayings--Life happens when you're making other plans. And yes, Death does that too. A perfectly balanced dichotomy that has held true for each one of us, though you'd hope that mostly heavy burden to the right of that idea is not one we suffer in too often. I was surprised, we'll say that, though I guess that's what I also must have realized since I did start writing her in the last year of her better life. Right now you hope she's not suffering, but I also know that's not promised either.

Without context anything appearing great can be ruined. I feel that has been largely missing from our recent living experience for everyone. Some people's context seems to be largely unaffected, and some people seem to ...