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Wednesday, September 15, 2004
in memory of Sammy
I was actually about to sit down at the computer this morning to do another Sheriff's Report entry (snake in a church this time, just for variety) when I got a sobering phone call from our church's prayer chain. A little boy, seven years old, who's been in my kids' Sunday school classes and Awana group for years, had been in a carpool on the way to school when there was an accident and he was injured. Then a few hours later the call came in that he had died. I just can't get his parents out of my mind. All through the day, all the ordinary stuff like dealing with the onset of my period, and wondering if our cat is sick (I'm thinking yes), and struggling with a pot of beans that just won't cook right (I have the worst luck with beans. Give me a complicated recipe involving wine and mushrooms and reducing and I do fine. But pinto beans confound me every time) and doing laundry and all that, all these things were just put on over the top of an underlying vicarious agony. As I was kissing my kids after they got into their jammies tonight, I thought of that couple's empty arms tonight (the boy was their only child) and just cried. People will surround them and do everything they can for them and love them, but it just has the feeling of trying to thaw a glacier with candles, or something. So inadequate. And our pain at not being able to do anything is just so inconsequential compared to theirs. It doesn't make me mad at God. It doesn't even really make me question what He's doing; I've been there and questioned that and moved on. But it just makes things seem bleak. Life, this life that gives us the opportunity to absorb beauty and feel passion and love people, can also be just so stark and horrible. And yet I am the lucky one this time around -- I'm touched relatively lightly by this boy's death. It hurts me indirectly; I am pained by other people's pain. I can go on with my day and do all the things that need doing. There are worlds of difference between being an onlooker to grief -- painful as that is -- and grieving oneself. Again I'm struck with the different feel this day will have for them, forever. The surreality of watching everyone else go on as normal -- people saying oh God I am so sorry and anything we can do just ask and then going home to their normal lives that haven't been turned upside down, just shaken a little -- and especially the people who don't even know, who are walking down the street when they're driving home from the hospital, who are not going away from their child's deathbed and probably never will and will not ever know that there was anything out of the ordinary about this day at all. And I think how often, how almost every minute of my life, I'm in that category for so many people. Tragedy happens every second, just not to us. While I'm watching P&P and folding laundry, some woman's getting a phone call that makes her scream and rock and sob and changes her life forever. For the sake of our sanity we can't bear to think about that for long; we just have to walk down the street, and fold our laundry, and wait to deal with the pain when it's our turn.
I didn't mean to go into all that. I just started typing and it all came out. I think it was good for me, so I'll leave it. Sorry for the downer this time ... come back another time for more of the usual sunny self-deprecating humor. I'm sure my life will be completely normal in very short order. For what that's worth.
