At work we interact via email with systems administrators daily and get to know them that way. Often we don't know anything about them. Very little personal information is exchanged since they are emailing us to take care of departmental business. Unless we've met them at a campus event, we don't know their age, what they look like....nothing.

Today, just a while ago, we got email from a systems administrator who says he's sorry to have to deliver this news, but one of the other systems administrators we also deal with in his department is in the hospital and isn't expected to live through the weekend. He said her husband will meet people in the lobby of the hospital today if they want to come by and be taken to her room to say goodbye to her.

Man.....this was like a ton of bricks falling on me. I don't know her personally but I know her from her emails to us. I just thought about it for a minute and wondered what happened to her. I checked and we got email from her about a month ago but nothing since. I wondered if she was an older woman so I Googled her and found her Facebook page and her Flickr account. She's young. Maybe 30's. As I looked at her Flickr account, it was hard to comprehend that this young woman is in a hospital dying. I got very sad. I looked at one photo of her taken in 2008. She looks really happy. She's pretty. Big smile. I thought to myself as I looked at her, did she have any idea she would die in 2011?

This just made me start thinking how no one knows what will happen tomorrow, next moth, 3 years from now...

Get busy having a good time TODAY because you're here today and you can. Life is short....we just don't know how short.