Requiescat in Pace

Late on Friday night, one of my neighbors, a middle-aged lady with many health problems, had a heart attack. She apparently tried to consult one of my other neighbors, who's a nurse. She got no answer at the door, so she left a note and went and sat down by her own door with a pillow. That's where she died, not long after midnight, before the nurse came home. All alone. The only good thing is that she doesn't seem to have felt much pain or realized she was as sick as she was. (We're only about three minutes from a hospital. If she'd felt that sick, she would've called.)

The whole thing is spooking the apartment building pretty fierce. Normally, somebody would have been in that hallway on a Friday night. But somehow, nobody was. Normally, the ambulance and the commotion with the police would have woken everybody up, too. But mostly, it didn't.

There's been a lot of gunk going around, so I think a lot of folks were just like me. I was sick, so I went to bed early with a big dose of cough medicine. None of the comings and goings all weekend even registered on me, since I was staying in my apartment or in bed most of the time.

All the same, it doesn't seem like anyone should have to die alone like that. So surely God was with her when the rest of us failed her. Surely.

Grant her eternal rest, O Lord, and may light eternal shine upon her.