When I arrived to work this morning, everyone was huddled around in the hallway outside of my office. They told me that one of the career administrative assistants, Margaret, had passed away last night or this morning.

It struck me particularly hard- both because she was a lovely funny woman who liked to stroll around the building dropping in on everyone to crack a lighthearted sarcastic joke, and also because it changes the atmosphere so completely in our daily lives to encounter mortality so unexpectedly. We all chuckled just yesterday with her, and she even brought her puppy into work. In "safe" little nooks of the ordinary death can still find us, and a newfound solidarity forms around we who are left behind, or still alive.

There is a look of alarm in everyone's eyes. Postures are more stiff and forward leaning.

This is really important everyone thinks.

Nothing can compare to this.

But how do we claim our relative entitlement to grieve her? Who was close enough to her, personally, not professionally, to warrant tears now, in public? Who must cry quietly back at their desk? and how quickly will this abrupt stringy bond around crisis fade into the normal charges that keep us all discrete and separate units of experience?