Horrible, Horrible News

This is probably not the most appropriate venue to discuss this, but I need to.
If you have been following, my parents (who have also decided they want to give the country life a go), J and I made another trip up north to look at the property I posted last week. The night before we left, my dad called me to update us on my aunt Danita's status. She was diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer several months ago, and has been treated in California, Mexico and now Arizona since then. Because it was stage 4, she needed to act quickly and intensely, and so has spent the past 6 or so months of her life recovering from her rounds of chemo and radiation (forgive me if some of my facts are off; I'm not thinking this through as I write). She is a fierce-spirited woman, and one that I admire deeply. She has a passion and strength about her that made it easy for us all to believe that even at stage 4, she would kick it's ass. But the update, contrary to the healing that she had been experiencing, was bad. Because of all of the rounds of chemo, etc., her kidneys were shutting down. She had filled up with fluids and the doctors had already drained a few quarts from two places in her body. If, they warned, her kidneys did not begin to function on their own again, she would die.
The next day we drove up to Paso and did our normal drive-bys and met with a guy about a barn, etc. It was less than exciting with the heaviness of Danita's status, but we also heard from my dad's brother that afternoon that she had stabilized throughout the night and was coherent and feeling relatively better. We all went to bed with the hope that she would kick her kidneys' asses as well, and pull through.
Sunday morning breakfast wasn't even done before the call came: dad needed to get on the soonest flight to AZ because her kidneys weren't regaining function. Danita knew what this meant, and told her husband that she would like to see her family one more time. She has 8 brothers and sisters, one being her twin sister and best friend, and another being her big brother, my dad.  She and her twin are the second youngest. They are still considered the babies of the family. We found a flight out of San Luis Obispo airport for 12:20, and though none of us had any desire what-so-ever to see anything now, we had an appointment and a few hours before the flight.
All that to say, we spent about 45 minutes at the property, but none of us really saw anything. We had all these plans and cameras and measuring devices and charts to map out the acreage, but we couldn't do any of it. We looked at it, walked around a bit, and then left. I want to say it is wonderful and everything we've been looking for for the past 5 years, but I honestly don't know if it is. It was like we were there, but we weren't there. I forgot the questions I wanted to ask; I forgot to see if there was a decent place for chickens; I forgot to walk around the property line. None of it even mattered in the face of Danita's (and her family's)struggle. It actually felt pathetic and ridiculous and meaningless. My aunt is fucking dying from the medicine supposed to cure her, and here we are, shopping for our future. How does that even compute? Even writing this, I cannot comprehend how she can be dying - and know that she is within hours of her last breath in this life - and I am on my couch, fireplace on, dogs sleeping at my side, and very much alive. And tomorrow I will get up, make coffee, kiss j goodbye and say, "Have a good day, babe" and then go to work. Like I do every other day of my life. As if no one at all was dying in a hospital bed, too young and too innocent, surrounded by people who will never, ever be the same again.
My dad just sent my siblings and me an email at 5:00 tonight, saying he just can't pull himself together to call. The doctors give her no more than 72 hours to live and they can do nothing more but try to keep her comfortable. She is still lucid at this point and saying her goodbyes to her brothers, sisters, mother, nieces, nephews, husband, daughter and son. They suggested doing it now in case she loses consciousness in the night (because she will never wake up). Her youngest daughter, Jess, can't get there until 10:00 am tomorrow and we are all hoping madly that she makes it in time for them both to say goodbye. My dad thinks she will wait to die until Jess gets there.
Death is a strange thing. It is the only thing that is as natural and certain as birth, and yet, when it comes, no matter how young or old the person is, we don't know how to handle it. It's as if we've never even heard of the thing called death. That is how unequipped we are to deal with it. Why is that? Why is it the one thing that absolutely can be counted on in life, the one thing as certain to every single living thing as life itself, is the one thing that terrifies and destroys us more than anything else we will ever face? We can't even talk about it, for God's sake. We say things like, "passed on" or "no longer with us" or "expired" even. Anything but "dead." Our language is full of euphemisms for death and dying, which allows us to ignore it and safely avoid even acknowledging it most of our lives. But then what do we do when it finally happens? And it will finally happen. To every single last one of us. We end up here, where I am now. Confused, scared, angry, shocked, paralyzed - anything but what we need in order to accept it as an absolutely essential part of every life and then grieve the way we are meant to.   
Sorry this has nothing to do with the blog, but I sat down to update and this is what needed to come out. If most of this doesn't make sense, it's probably because I can't make sense out of most of this.