When Death comes for someone you know, you can feel the icy edges of his robe sweep past you.
Yesterday, one of my children's cousins died unexpectedly. I am estranged from my ex-husband's family, so I hadn't seen him for several years. Still, the news came as a shock. He was between my two oldest boys age-wise (in his early 20s). There was no lingering illness, no warning. It is a terrible blow for their family and I am so sorry for their loss. The thread of his life was not worn or fading, just cut cleanly short by the sharp scissors of fate.
As horrible and tragic as the situation is, I feel no personal sense of loss; only the deep and profound sadness one feels on behalf of others. Without that sense of loss, it's difficult to reconcile that he's not just "away from me and no longer in my personal world except in a peripheral way." That boy is gone forever, never to be seen again in this life. He will never get married, raise children, attend my own children's weddings, etc. And that...is profoundly sad.
My heart breaks for my former sister-in-law. I can't imagine losing any one of my own children and now she's buried her two youngest. I cannot begin to comprehend her grief. I will extend condolences and pray for her. The hem of Death's garment has brushed past me. I feel that cold caress and the whisper of dry, ancient fabric, "It could have been one of them...it could have been any one of them..."
Then, earlier today, I read
this post from The Houston Chronicle. I love Jenny, aka, The Bloggess... when she isn't being screamingly, scare the cat I'm laughing so loud funny, she writes in a way that speaks to me viscerally. In a sense, she writes like the voices in my head sound. So when she wrote about the accident at her daughter's school, I
felt it. I felt the touch, heard the rustle, but this time it whispered, "It could have been you...it could have been you..." Maybe that second pass wouldn't have happened had Death not already been near, but it did and again I was chilled.
My heart just breaks for the family of that woman. They have to move forward and through what seems impossible. My heart breaks for the children who witnessed the accident. My heart aches for the poor woman who was behind the wheel of that car.
The last of the trifecta was a Facebook post from my daughter-in-law saying that one of her grandparents had died today. She's lost two this year.
Today the world seems like a bad and dangerous place. On days like today, I have an inkling of the fear my mother felt every time I walked out the door or down a flight of stairs. I try not to live in constant fear of losing my loved ones, but I'm genetically wired to worry and was reared in a culture of fear.
Days like today make that struggle a little harder.
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