Two Deaths One Week

I'm not sure why these things bounce back and forth in my brain, these reports of tragic circumstance. These are not people with whom I have a great familiarity, yet there is a lingering sadness which colors my thoughts.

The loss of the young child could perhaps be understood because it happened to a neighbor of ours, someone with whom Cheryl, at least, has maintained a relationship. For my own part, it echoes because it is one of my own greatest fears become real, only years later and to someone else.

The loss of Natasha Richardson is more puzzling because she is not even an acquaintance, merely someone who appears in a movie we've seen (over and over and over again). And other than "The Parent Trap", we've seen none of the other movies in which she has played.

Perhaps it is not the persons who have died which brings about this odd, despairing feeling but rather the circumstance which brought about their demise. In the first case, a simple cessation of breathing with no apparent cause. In the second, a blow to the head which should have resulted in nothing more than a bump and a bruise, and an amusing fireside tale of clumsiness on the beginner's ski slope.

Do we really need reminders that life is so fragile? Or that we have little or no control over our own ends?

Every time illness strikes at our house, it occurs to me that we are set on a path with two directions. Either the illness will run its course and health will be restored, or someone is going to end up in the hospital - or worse. We read about things like this all the time. One day a person has a slight headache, the next day they are lying in a morgue covered with a sheet because a weak blood vessel in their brain burst. One day someone seems to come down with the flu, the next day they are lying cold and stiff after losing a battle with a raging infection.

We who are Christians accept the fact that life can be short, that the end of our lives (which are no more than vapor) can occur when we do not expect it, but we have a hope and a faith that there is a life to come which will never end, that we will pass through this life to another and never worry about death again.

Even so, when the end of a life occurs and it is as unexpected as these, the mind struggles to find a reason for it. The child did nothing to deserve death. The woman, to our knowledge, did nothing which, in our earthly judgement, deserved death. Indeed, the child brought great pleasure and joy to his family, and the woman entertained thousands of families. Yet death came to both of them.

And here we are, waiting for the next tragedy to occur.

This is not to say that we should live in fear for our lives - or for the lives of others (which is a constant struggle for some of us). Indeed, we who believe in the life to come, have great reason not to fear.

But it really isn't fear of dying that haunts me; it is the fear of living with a loss.

Because I can imagine being the parent of a small child who has died.

And I can imagine walking through my house and into the room where the child once lay sleeping, standing inside that room and looking at the crib where the child spent its last breath, where many happy memories had been made, thinking to myself, Oh, if I'd only come in to check on the baby a few minutes before! And a million different scenarios would come to my mind, scenarios where the baby had not died if only I had ...

And I can imagine being the husband of the wife and mother who is suddenly gone, sitting in the house at the table with the empty chair, remembering what it was like jsut a few days ago when she was there, laughing, hugging, kissing, loving. And thinking if she had ... if they had ... if only ...

It is the curse of the imaginative mind (in the manner of "day-dreaming", not "bright") to be able to put oneself into the place of others, to experience the emotions of those undergoing such tragedies, to empathize, to add to one's own anxieties with the troubles of others. Sometimes it helps with forming friendships. But there is always that price to pay, that carryover from knowing what others might be feeling.