Sad Stuff

When I got back from Christmas break I overheard the teacher telling the students that something sad had happened while we were all away on our vacations. She said that one of the students (we'll call her K) had been in an accident and that she was "gone". One sentence later she was introducing the new student as if the new student had replaced the one who died. It seemed as though it hardly phased anyone. The whole day I was thinking about K and all the conversations we had. I thought how sad it was that her life was cut short. But, for me, what was even more sad was that people just moved on with their lives or so it seemed. Maybe it wasn't the right setting for everyone to sadly reminisce about K's life or maybe people just don't know how to react to death but I just felt this extreme sadness and I wished I knew if others were experiencing the same.

Fast Forward: Two Weeks Later

My cousin's wife Heather had been struggling with cancer for a while. I was supposed to see her at Christmas Eve but I had a bad cold and would have made it worse if I visited her in that condition. She was supposed to come to my wedding as well but she was too weak to come.

On Monday I just had one of those bad days. My friend had told me something in the morning before work that caused me to be on the verge of tears for the entire day. After work I had to pick up Joel at the tire store. I couldn't keep the tears in anylonger so with teary eyes we continued to look for tires for Joel. We had gone to three more stores and couldn't find what he was looking for. When we finally found the tires we needed we realized that we couldn 't afford them unless we used a bunch of gift certificates that we had gotten from our wedding plus money that I didn't really have. I was clearly having a rough day.

Some time in the middle of running all our errands I noticed that I had a voice mail. It was my mom informing me that Heather had passed away. I was thinking of what a crappy and frustrating day I had and then I thought of my cousin Scott who just lost his wife at the age of thirty-four. I can't even imagine what he is going through. I wish I could understand death. I wish I could just say that K and Heather are in a better place now and be satisfied with that. I will never understand why some people have long full lives while other lives are cut short, but what I have learned for sure is that life (short or long) is an amazing gift from God. It's easy to get consumed by the frustration of life and the rough days but I have to remember how blessed I am to have life now and even after I die.