I've told you before that I felt I had to justify my existence every day to my father. "Just the good news, please," the doctor wanted to hear from his family to compensate for the complaints he heard all day from his patients. So we/I wanted to give a good report, preferably entertaining and as I progressed in my studies, informative, thought-provoking and stimulating. Well, it goes on: what did I learn today?

Actually, a lot. It's Sunday and The New York Times is full of news and ideas. It's hard to choose. Discussions are going on apace to determine the WOTY - the Word of the Year. (Last year it was the selfie.) As I read this morning, an argument has not been settled about the validity of a hashtag#phrase as opposed to one word. We'll see. If you didn't know it already I loove words.

Another NYT article tells the story and the difficulty of naming: products, games, all kinds of things. At this time in the history of the world, a name has to satisfy all people, no matter what their language is. What sounds good in English might be an obscenity somewhere else. "One man's meat is another man's poisson." I didn't originate that, it's by an American author, poet and mystery writer called Carolyn Wells (1862-1942). I remembered the line and the name of the person who said it, knowing nothing of the writer till just now when I looked her up.

The article about naming went into great detail about the difficulties involved, the research and the clearing required to establish a brand name. You can look that. up; it's quite interesting. But what I learned today was that Carolyn Wells was a prolific writer when all I knew was one line.

Learn something every day.

Three announcements of deaths within the last week: one, a very old woman who had pretty well left her body; two, the brother of a friend after a three-week hopeless illness; three, yesterday, the husband of a close friend with no warning, as far as I know, I don't know the details yet. I am so sorry for the pain of loss suffered by close ones.

What can I say? At my age I know for a fact that no one is immortal. As my late husband used to say, "One out of one dies of something." And I have already said, keep saying, that I feel like a duck in a shooting gallery, surviving so far, but with everyone being picked off all around me, it's just a matter of time.

So it is with everyone: just a matter of time. Rather than rage against the dying of the light, I try to concentrate on what brightness there was. I really am grateful for what gleams have been granted to us. And I still say, in spite of everything, have a reason to get out of bed in the morning, however slowly. Some days are darker and slower than others.

De mortuis nil nisi bonum. About the dead, nothing but good. (I think I got that right.) That's what wakes and shivas are for, what mourning is for: to remember the good times and the good things about the most recent absentee, to honour the life that was and to cherish the memories. "What comfort is in me. If thou shouldst never see my face again pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of."

And prayer can take many forms. This is one of them.