Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I've been at our cabin for three weeks with dear friends next door.  I didn't see them much but it was enough and comforting.  We had our younger son, his wife and child for week, then the last week our younger daughter and two grandsons, with her husband coming up both weekends.  The kids are a great tonic, delightful and distracting, and they exhausted me in a good way.  I woke up at six am to help and fell into bed at ten pm.  Last evening, as we were saying goodbye to our friends renting the cabin next door, me right beside my friend at the picnic table, a pine cone fell and hit her forehead, the bridge of her nose and her left arm.  We were shocked, and she had bleeding at all three sites, and then we discovered her eyeglass lens had been knocked out.  It fell between the deck floorboards to the underside of the cabin, and her partner and my son-in-law searched with flashlights until it was found.  The cone could have killed my friend, as it came from the great height of a sugar pine tree, and I was confronted with the randomness and strangeness of it all.  My first thought was it must have been meant for me, because I feel felled by grief.  Then I was stunned because my friend could have been seriously hurt or died.  I called her a couple of hours later to see how she was doing, while we were driving home, and she was fine, but it could have been me, my daughter, husband, five month old grandson, three and a half year old grandson, or my friend's partner.  Right after the lens was found, the sky erupted with thunder and rain.  We all rushed to cover beds and suitcases on both decks, then it stopped, as if a message had been sent:  treasure the moment and the ones you love, for life is fleeting and arbitrary.