Emily's Worldview

I won't try to be original in this post. I opened the email entitled "tragic death" idly, not expecting to find a familiar face grinning back at me. Alice was a genius MD-MPH who spent more hours at school than anyone else but was always ready to laugh about it anyway. On a visit home, she was struck and killed by an empty school bus, turning left. So it is that you can be visiting your mom in New York and step into the intersection, beckoned by a walk sign that you'll never reach and that's it, that's your life, thanks for playing. As for the rest of us--mother, busdriver, acquaintances, bystanders--the pieces are ours to pick up and carry as we wake up each morning and step off the curb.