Why it was too much

A few weeks ago, I lamented here the deaths of a beautiful bird and a character in a foreign movie. Perhaps I'm overly empathetic, but at that point, I had also just had too much of death for a while. A couple weeks before that, my mom made the difficult decision to euthanize our aging family dog, the sweet pup we just couldn't stay mad at when she peed in the house or escaped down the street or barked incessantly, because she also did funny things and licked our faces and always had a smile on that cute pointed muzzle. But she was heading toward the light, and it was just time. She'd been with the family for so long that I have felt her absence despite living far away for many years. Then, one morning about a week before that post, the local news announced the death of two airplane pilots who had crashed the day before while delivering assistance to firefighters in the Utah mountains. And I knew one of the men. Not well - I had only met him once, on an awkward date back in November, after exchanging messages through a dating site - but still, I knew him. He seemed like a nice enough guy. Any death is sad, but when it's someone you have met, it hits a little closer to home. That one felt weird for quite a few days, especially since, when we had started talking and I found out what he did, I thought "Gee, flying small planes like that sounds dangerous." So by the time the bird and the man in the movie had perished, I had had enough of death. I guess I was crying not just for them but also for the pup and the pilot. I hope the mourning doves cooed extra hard that day.