Today I went to the memorial service for Anne Trachtenberg Hughes, a neighbor and would-have-been friend and colleague. I only met her two weekends ago, which because of my recent business trip to DC feels like last weekend. She was a fund-raiser and board member, was incoming chair of the local SPCA, the board of which I am joining, partly because I met her and she gave me confidence in her leadership.

I'd been impressed by her happy home, filled with books and art and dogs. Her husband, Tom Hughes, is publisher of Adirondack Life magazine. Today at the service his grief and exhaustion were painful to observe but also somehow freeing--I had been mourning her as if I knew her, and seeing him relieved me of the burden of grief. Her lover and the church packed full of people grieve her. I would grieve John, or he me, if it had been either of us.

She slid off the road on black ice and died of massive head injuries. Because they had plans to marry in May on their twentieth anniversary, they were married in the hospital while she lay in the coma. Now he can say, "my wife died."

At the wake / reception I met a handful of strong women. That was a boon. The death of one strong woman opens my life to others.

The last time I was shocked and saddened so by the death of a person I did not know was when Ron Brown, Democratic Party bigwig who died in the 1990s, died in a plane wreck.