Deaths in threes

My apologies for lack of posting.  It has been a hell of a week.  We had two snow days (Mon/Tues) which lead to Wednesday being a landslide at school and I feel as though my life has been turned upside down.

First, the major things: ever hear about how people die in 3s?  Well I've had 2 deaths in my life in the past three weeks and I've been having nightmares about someone else dying.  SPC Torre was killed in Iraq, and my future sister-in-law-of-sorts (Emily) unexpectedly died on Tues day night.

My sister is getting married this June to her wonderful man John, and Emily is John's sister. (So technically Emily is my sister's sister-in-law, but you get the picture).  The plan was to have five bridesmaids and four groomsmen at the wedding.  I am the maid of honor (as the bride is my only sister) and I was going to walk down the isle alongside Emily and Jeff (John's twin brother).  Tuesday night, Emily wasn't feeling well.  She had some pain in her calf, and she passed out at home.  The ambulance arrived quickly but they were unable to resuscitate her.  Autopsy later revealed multiple pulmonary emobli, likely from a deep vein thrombosis.  Emily was quite young, only 29, but I guess she was as risk as a smoker and being on birth control.  The family is absolutely heartbroken, as am I.  My sister got to spend a lot of time with Emily, and my parents got to meet her at John's college graduation, but I never got to meet her.  I feel absolutely awful about it even though I'm quite removed from the situation.

Emily's funeral is 4 hours away on Monday, and I can't miss school for it.  On top of that SPC Torre's memorial service was rescheduled due to the snow, and now I can't attend because I'll be taking my Radiology exam at that time.  All this on top of the usual stress at school has turned me into an unhappy person this week.  I just feel conflicted - I don't know how to handle this other than to pretend it's not there.

Meanwhile my friends continue on with their lives.  Triumphs and failures, stress and fun times.  I went out to dinner with friends and all I could think about was death - which made it really hard to have appropriate conversation.  (After all, who wants to go out to have fun and then end up talking about serious/sad things)  I expect this conflicted feeling will slowly ebb away over the next few weeks, but I've been sleeping poorly and deep down I'm afraid of someone else in my life dying.  Maybe it will be someone who is exceptionally close to me.  I know this is completely irrational and worrying about people dying around me will do no good, but I still have that small thought in the back of my head.

On a high note, I did get to talk to DB for 20 min this afternoon.  He's not sure if he'll watch the superbowl (it'll be airing in Iraq at 2am).  He's not big into football, but this is the only time during the deployment that the guys are allowed to have beer - 2 beers to be exact, so he might go just for that.  Regardless, I hope he has fun and isn't too overtired in the morning.

Check out that handsome man

Alas, I should get back to studying.