Sister-in-Law of my Sister-in-Law

ok, so....the call came at 8:50 am...as I was getting settled in for the monthly meeting of those who manage public health departments...in Frankfort.....the caller ID announced that Fred was on the line...and when Fred calls my cell phone it is serious stuff.....he called when sister Sylvia died...from a long battle with a series of brain tumors.....this call was taken on a country road in Virginia the first time Ernst and the boys attempted to finish Ernst's cross-country bike ride....we dropped everything and drove to upstate NY for the funeral knowing there was time to finish that ride at some point yet unknown. The next call was when Ernst's sister Marilynn died...after a long bout with recurrent breast and ovarian cancers....I found out later that mine was not the first cell phone number he used to get in touch....my youngest uses my original cell phone number....the one that frequently gets confused with the xray reading room at the local hospital...ah...the price the young pay for a free cell phone....and i use a new number....for Fred's name to pop up means that I had him listed as a contact.....but I digress.....Fred's sister Sally died suddenly and he wanted me to hear the news before I read it on-line....as I would....as Sally is (was) a FB friend....though I met her the first and only time at Marilynn's funeral....I have since had almost daily contact with her through Scrabble, Wordtwist, messages, and likes/comments on photos. Our last exchange was just this week...on a darling photo of her grandchild using the family cat as a pillow....I have an unfinished game of Scrabble going with her, a cousin Anne from Oklahoma and her sister Lucy who lives in New Zealand....I met Lucy on our last visit to Marilynn before she died, and I have never met Anne, though we often babble back and forth in the comment section of the Scrabble board as well as on messaging and on status updates. I am saddened that my world is smaller by one, and anxious to communicate condolences to her family...those I have met and those I have not....I actually met her parents way back when at the first Thanksgiving I spent with the Webers, and I met her husband and sons at Mariylynn's funeral....but through technology I enjoyed years of delightful interchange with her, and I feel her loss more than typed words can convey.....