I talk to my parents every Sunday night at 7 p.m. They usually call me. I talk to my mom first, then my dad. It’s a routine.

Tonight I ask my mom how she is. She sighs. “Well, we just got home from the emergency room …”

OMFG do NOT use the words “emergency room” and then stop talking. I was srsly running down a list in my mind. Dad? David? Aunt Nancy? Uncle Dean? (short list, I don’t have many relatives LOL). After my panicked, “Oh my God!,” my mom sighed again and said, “It was your father.” “WHAT IS WRONG?” “Well, he had a bladder infection …”

What. The. Fuck?

You panic me over a motherfucking BLADDER INFECTION????

As far as poorly delivering news, my dad still outranks my mom (the VM where I thought he was telling me that my mother was dead is one example and e-mailing me that my grandmother was in the final stages of dying and would be gone that afternoon is still the most heinous), but come on. Le sigh.

My thoughts have been with a colleague of mine in Arizona. I think I mentioned her before; she has three small children and her breast cancer had returned and spread. As of Friday, she was expected to live only for a few more days. Her photo is on our corporate web site, as part of a rotating series, and every time her face pops up I just wonder, why? How? It’s a terrible, terrible loss.