One of my coworkers had her birthday recently. It was five days after another coworker had died. He died at 42. She is in her 70s.

I considered not saying anything to her about her birthday. This is the one who never talks except to complain. “I don’t mean to complain, but…” is her catch phrase. But I decided to wish her a happy birthday anyway. Now I wish I hadn’t.

Her response? “When you get to my age, birthdays don’t matter much.”

Any other time, this wouldn’t have hit me as hard as it did. But five days after a really awesome person died?

Ungrateful wretch. At least she had a birthday to celebrate. She’s had way more birthdays that Jeff will ever have.

It isn’t fair. It isn’t fair that the good people die young and we are stuck with the mean people. It isn’t fair that there are patrons who come to the library every day and spend all day on the computers, playing Facebook games. They are wasting their lives, while there are better people who don’t have lives left to waste because they are dead.

I keep wondering, when she dies, will anybody go to her funeral? What will they say? Will they miss her?

I’m sad and angry at the same time for all the people who are still alive and are not using their time well. They sleepwalk through their days, they are mean, they are selfish. They don’t volunteer. They don’t make the world better.

Why do they get more time and the wonderful, amazing, kind people have to die?