Another death

This morning there was an SMS waiting on my phone for me. It informed my entire class that our classmate's mother has just passed away (on his ORD day somemore) and we can attend the wake at a certain address. It didn't quite hit me until half an hour later after I'd washed up that I realized what it really meant. So a few of my friends and I went there today to pay our respects to his mum and to visit him. His eyes were red and he looked slightly tired, but was generally cheerful. Slightly awkward at first but we all relaxed after a while. This group of classmates are always ever cheerful, talking about anything and everything. He laughed a lot and I hope we really cheered him up, even if it's for that hour plus.

Finally one of us managed to ask him what happened to his mum. He told her quite calmly what happened. Must have reiterated the same story to a number of people. In summary, it was some infection that spread very rapidly, affecting her heart, lungs, kidneys. Within a few days she was in ICU and not long later she was gone. She was taken in about a week. We were shocked. Infection that could spread so rapidly? Then another female friend said that was what happened to her mum as well, pneumonia and she was gone in about 2 weeks.

Why do death come so soundlessly? One moment the person's fine, the next moment the person's sick and before you know it, he/she is gone. I'm shaken by the knowledge of his mother's death.

Life is really very fragile. I hope that he and his family will be strong.