The images from Haiti are awful and haunting. I made my first contribution yesterday, and resolve to make a monthly gift for the rest of 2010. Once Anderson Cooper packs up his t-shirts and returns to the US, we’re all going to start forgetting and get distracted by other calamities –and celebrations. Life is relentless that way.

Closer to home, I’ve already been to one funeral since the new calendar went up. I will, alas, be attending another funeral in the coming week. Terrible, untimely losses both.

I send cards and visit. I do my best to stay in touch as time goes by. And then my life takes over — the petty nonsense and the genuine pleasures.

Life is relentless. It wrings us out and leaves us behind and it’s tough to find the blessing in the collapsed schoolroom, the mother mourning her beautiful 28-year-old son.