One of our friends called earlier today. It wasn't good news the last time he called and it wasn't good news today either. Our last phone conversation had found me finding out that his wife had died. When he called and spoke I thought it was odd that he was calling me, instead of her callling me, and then he didn't speak. I thought, This is very strange." He finally spit it out that his wife of thirteen years or so had died the evening before, totally unexpected.

She was my age, had just turned forty-five in August and this was September, the first day of school for the children around here. It started like any other day. She took her two youngest (10 & 12) to school (she had homeschooled for many, many years as she has three older daughters), went to Bible Study that night, stopped at Sombrero's for dinner and went home. Within twenty minutes of having trouble breathing, she died. No warning, nothing. Just gone. A family devastated.

I think her aorta burst or something like that. My past-paramedic friend told me no surgeon in the world would have been able to get into her chest fast enough to help her. Her funeral was fantastic. The Newsboys were played at a deafening sound. The song? SHINE That was Susan. She let her light shine before men. She loved her children, her grandchildren, her husband, her Savior, her life. At the end of the funeral Shine was played again with a slide show of Susan's life.

So today, again, I thought it was odd when my phone told me that it was Steven. I thought maybe he needed help with childcare or something. Susan's daughter Brianna and her family had moved back in with Steven and the two children to help so that really shouldn't have been it either. What Steven told me sent me into disbelief. Brianna had died Monday/Tuesday in the wee hours of the morning, about 4am or so to be exact. Her husband had just talked to her at 3:30 am. Brianna was only 22. She was watching a movie, surfing the net........Too young to die of a heart attack. Her babies aren't even two and one. She's been married for about five years or so. How can this be happening to this family again? Her funeral will be sometime next week.

I called my friend to tell her and she told me that Brianna had accepted the Lord in her Awana group. That's how I remember Bri, a smile, us trying to get her to wear her Awana uniform but she didn't want to because it was too small, and just hangin out with family.

My husband is now hot on my trail because I haven't been taking my blood pressure meds and he says that's me waiting to happen with the exception that she was half my age.

I'm still in shock, a little weepy and terribly sad for my friends because I know they miss their mom and grandma, their wives, their big sister, their life.