Loss

This life is characterized by deaths, big and small. Death of a particular form of life, whether it's preschool teachers, college studies, or life's partners. Health, opportunities, "the way things should work" as new generations reinvent how to live. The spring flowers falling from the trees. Remembering a child who is no longer there. Knowing things will never be the same.

Why, in the midst of these deaths, do we dream of security? Why are we surprised by bad news? Why is it hard to understand a fatal diagnosis or grim piece of news, or feel that "it could never happen to me"?

I think back to the myth of Pandora's box, in which the curious girl opened the box and released evil into the world. Hope knocking at the lid gave the small help that we need to get through life.

Is it not so? We always seem to hope: hope things get better, somehow, somewhere. Even the suicidal person hopes, in a sense, to be released from her pain.

The suicide of a 10th grader at my kids' school on Easter night devastates me. My son didn't know her. My daughter knows the girl's sister. Her name was Grace, an ironic name for such a tragic end. I am crying for her although until I heard about this I didn't know she existed. I cry for her parents. I cannot, cannot imagine.

Sometimes I'm overcome with the grief of living in this world. Why is it so sad?

My Christian faith answers, it is the tarnish of sin that spoils every good thing on this earth. Death is an end. I believe the clock began to click when Eve then Adam bit into that apple (whether real or allegorical, whatever you wish to accept). Before that Time was not a unidimensional substance with a forward arrow -- it was simply an encompassing NOW. Before that, Time did not have Death linked with her.

I wonder what happens after death. I wonder where that little girl is. I fear for her.