"I Just Saw Him".

I don't understand people most times. Maybe I'd get them better if I tried less. People tend to know more the less they try to find out, it seems to me. I was a lot smarter before I learned anything myself. In any case, human behavior and thinking eludes me. I suppose there's no sense in trying to understand any word or deed that comes from emotion rather than rational thinking, and more and more there is none of the latter in people.

So much of life is in figuring out death. Something I don't get is a very common reaction to news of someone's death. Someone will get the word, and their first reaction will be disbelief. It won't be because they don't expect that someone might die or that they think the person was in too good of health or too careful or too anything. No, they'll be surprised the person died because they just saw them. "I just ate lunch with her a couple days ago", someone will cry out. What bearing has that on things?


I really don't understand people. What is the connection between proximity to you and staving off death? If I didn't know better, I'd think you were implying that the fountain of youth bubbles and flows inside of you. I'm sure that's not what you're saying, but it sounds like that. Or maybe you just have a really good eye for who's got the hand of death on their shoulder. Even if it's not some long term illness, somehow you know, right? You can see a light on someone who has a deadly car wreck coming?

As for me, I don't expect the sudden death of anyone around me. At the moment I know of no one dying a slow death, so that would shock me, but there ought to be no surprise when someone dies suddenly any more than when someone known to be fatally ill passes. Life is so very fragile. We're really very weak and vulnerable. We try to take precautions and gain some kind of certainty, but the frightening truth is that we have no way of knowing our time or that of anyone else. Going to visit someone is certainly no insurance against their passing, but it's never a bad idea anyway.