Today I found out that a fellow camp counselor of four years went from whole to nothing in the space of a few hours. A blood clot, blocked lungs, and no oxygen, and that was it.
I can't say she was ever a close friend of mine, and I know she's dancing with Jesus now. But none of that changes the fact that one just cannot make sense of this. All of us, from her closest friends and family all the way out to people who barely knew her, are reeling from the mind-numbing WHY of it, and from our complete, total powerlessness to stop it.
In some cases there is a clear enemy. Death by war, violence, cancer, disease, accidents, all of these are their own kind of horror. But in all of them, we can point a shaking finger at THAT THING that took our loved one away.
I'm not saying that makes it easier in any way. It doesn't, I'm sure. But my fragile brain can't comprehend this -- the instant in which her body turned on itself and was destroyed. One tiny set of particles gone the wrong way, and like a set of dominoes, the whole system crashed down. No one could predict it, no one could stop it. And in the face of such an extreme declaration of human powerlessness, I am shaken to the core.
All this is starkly displayed on a backdrop of yesterday's events: my own trip to the emergency room with my husband after a bike accident. Of course it was awful, and I couldn't stand seeing him in so much pain, but at the end of the day we were home with his arm in a splint and a bottle of pills on the coffee table. I already knew at the time how fortunate we were to end an ER trip in this way. I didn't need another reminder that life is fragile, but here it is nonetheless.
And so I find myself staggering a little, unable to fathom the events of the day and how the families involved are shattered. Fully aware that it could have been I whose life was irreversibly altered by one day's rush to the hospital, but instead I am here, home and safe, with my loving partner on the mend.
Why? None of us will ever know.
