Saturday morning the wife and I woke up, looked over and saw that young Nyles was sleep, and we decided to watch a little mindless television before we started our day. We were flipping channels and came across a picture of Whitney looking a bit disheveled and Ray-J right there with her. The wife and I talked and joked about the both of them briefly, and then we went on about our day.

Later in that day, the conversation drifted towards my mother, and how I wished she still lived in the DC area, as opposed to Cleveland. I mentioned that the only way my mother would move back here is if my grandparents died, because the whole reason she moved back to Ohio was to take care of them. It started off as me wanting my mother to be closer to me, then it sounded selfish, then it drifted to something morbid, and I veered out of that conversation too.

That night Whitney Houston died and Sunday morning my grandfather died. The first death is sad and unfortunate, but I'm not losing any sleep over her. I cried when I got the news of my grandfather, and my heart was intermittently heavy yesterday, but damn, the man was 88 years old, beat prostate cancer and alcoholism, and died on his terms--just a week after he had left the hospital after rehabilitating a broken hip. I worry about my mother and grandmother now, although last night they both seemed to be doing much better. It is just a little strange that two seemingly innocuous conversations took dramatic turns. But life goes on I suppose...