Part 3 continued

You think you know how you will react to the unsettling news of a death in the family,just like you think you knew what the day would be like when it came about.But you don't know that either.I didn't.

All through life we were prepared for the fact that life ends eventually for everyone.So I thought I'd be prepared.All of my grandparents had long passed. I'd lost two of my best friends at this point too,and because they were both so young,it came as a shock.In both of those cases it was some time between the time of their passing and the time I found out. I've even known friends that had children carried away by death far too soon. During my childhood,my grandmother would write to my mother every few weeks.Those letters,which she would always read to us contained,among other things news that someone or other had died.Nearly every letter did.So we were used to the idea that people passed on.Most of those people were old people,so it would be truer to say that we were accustomed to the idea that old people died.At the time I wondered how long it would take for the town my mother called home to just all die off, because it was a town of the elderly,so it seemed.I even heard people joke about it.So I thought I was used to the idea of death.Intellectually I knew that there would come a day when both of my parents would be departed,if,of course death didn't take me first.So I thought I knew how to handle it,or at least how I would handle it,even if it were not the right way.I was wrong.

No matter how prepared I might have been,I was not prepared to function well in the days and hours following the news.In large part,that is because all of the great existential questions are there,and I'd never really thought of them that much,at least in terms of how they would effect me.Why is there evil in the world? Why does God allow good people to suffer while evil people prosper? How could God allow my mother to be killed when she was my fathers care giver,so needed?How could God have denied him the mercy of death in that same accident?Why must he suffer a few more years with all his current afflictions,then lose his life's companion as well? Where did my mothers soul go?And what of the young man who died with her? What did she really believe,and was it enough to secure her salvation? From the time the police car drove away,these questions would not let me be.There was immediate disbelief,and a longer struggle with these questions,and nothing seemed to make a lot of sense.In looking back,I realize I wasn't functioning that well,though I convinced myself I was,and convinced others as well.

For a long time I just wandered around the house.I looked out the window,at the thin layer of snow in the tall grasses out behind the house.I watched the planes come and go from the airport off to the north east.For once I was grateful that I didn't know anyone else in the house that well.No real civility was called for so I just stayed in my room lost in routine things.I would go to the refrigerator from time to time,hold the door open for a bit,but didn't eat anything,lost in thought that is impossibly hard to describe.I'm not sure even I knew what those thoughts were,and I really don't recall all these years later.I was just aware of thought,and not much else for a time.Certainly not for the whole content of that thought.A bit later I was able to sift through it all and try to impose some reason on it all,though not at all successfully.It was routine that got me through those first few days and weeks.I could respond to routine when I didn't have much response to reality.


"When death has come and taken our loved ones
It leaves a home so lonely and drear'
then do we wonder why others prosper
Living so wicked year after year."