I'm really beginning to hate funeral homes and obituaries and flowers and all of the accoutrements of death.

Because March clearly hasn't been bad enough yet, my grandmother passed away this morning following several days in a palliative care/ hospice type ward. Friday morning I was told they didn't think she'd make it through the night. So I left work, grabbed a suitcase still half filled with laundry from my immediately previous visit, drove to my parents' rural-ish eastern Pittsburgh suburb with two cats meowing piteously in the back while praying to my new personal patron saint of speed trap spotting (a.k.a. my brother) to intercede for me, dropped my cats with their country cousins, and then zoomed off to Akron while alternately praying that I avoided tickets and that I'd make it in time to say goodbye. Grandma was stubborn and tenacious to the end, which is why I'm just writing this now and not this past Saturday night. Maybe she didn't want to leave us so soon after losing my brother. I do know that Grandma probably would have appreciated having so much of her family there for her towards the end, and that few people will ever be so fortunate as to love and be loved as much as she. What I don't know (among many things) is how one is supposed to cope with so much devastating loss in such a short period of time.