Over the weekend, a guy I grew up with asked his Facebook friends for prayers for his younger sister, K. She’d had a brain aneurysm, he said, and she was coming out of surgery, and they were hopeful. As yet there hasn’t been a happy ending to their story, and it doesn’t look like there will be.

My mom and theirs were close friends when I was growing up, so we spent a lot of time together when we were very young. I have one of those sunny, hazy childhood memories of running around their grandparents’ porch with them — in my mind, their grandfather looked just like Santa — but they moved away and I didn’t see much of them after that so I didn’t know her all that well.

Still: I’m crushed for them. As a mother, as a big sister, as a daughter. That kind of loss would leave such a hole in my life; I don’t know what you do with that kind of grief.

I’m thinking of their family, and I’m praying for them. For a miracle or at the very least for a sense of peace and solace. I don’t know what else there is to do for something like this.

This life is so short, and we’re so fragile.