I did something today that I've been dreading. I finally got the courage to search for my mother's name in the Social Security Death Index (SSDI). And yes, she's in there, although she passed away only about ten weeks ago.

It still doesn't truly register. I thought it would be a few more decades before Mom would appear in this resource that I use on a daily basis without any thought--without any thought of what it really means. Each one of those millions of entries meant the world to someone.

There's a part of me that's convinced the entry is for someone else-- especially because hers is so full of red herrings. Unless you actually knew her, her SSDI listing would send you off on a wild goose chase. And for that reason, I thought it might make a good example of how we sometimes read too much into the details we find in the SSDI.

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