Can't speak

The good feelings were short-lived.  I got yet another kind of awful news from Hometown that I wasn't expecting.  One of my cousins, a generation older than I, has been felled by a stroke.  The right side of hir body is weakened, although not paralyzed, and zi cannot speak.  No telling yet what the long-term prospects are for recovery.

It's so hard to grieve these things by myself, in a town I wish I weren't in on a good day, let alone today, with almost no one around to whom I would even mention these matters.  I want to curl up in a fetal position and have someone I love hold my head while I sob.  But there is no one like that here.  I won't even have a therapy appointment until next week.

Zi is pretty much the last one in the family I'd expect this to happen to.  Zi is zealous about watching hir diet, getting regular exercise, and living with almost Buddhist-like moderation.  We've been close since I was a baby.  We've always shared the same sense of humor, and traded terribly corny jokes with each other.

And now zi cannot speak.  And neither can I.