Our Very Fragile Lives
“Adam passed away,” I said, with disbelief.
“What?” my husband questioned.
Repeating, I said, “Adam passed away, today!”
“I didn’t see that coming,” he said, stunned, much like I felt. We didn’t know him well, but we considered him a good friend even in the short time we were able to spend with him. He was fairly young and we didn’t know of any health issues, so his death was a surprise.
That same day, my friend called to tell me her mother had passed away, after a long illness. “I know my life will continue,” my friend said, “but there is this hole from just knowing she won’t be in my world anymore and that lone piece of knowledge leaves me very lonely.”
And to complete the weekend, a young military man we know well, lost a comrade in an undertow, in a freak accident while at the ocean on a “down day.”
Last week one of my cousins shared about her extended family, who had lost a set of twin boys, age three, in a freak pool accident. It seems the boys somehow managed to crawl under or over (they weren’t sure which) the fencing while at a family gathering. There was still another incident where a graduated Senior lost his life in a house fire. Accidents happen in all our lives, when we least expect it.
There was a news clip on the newscast recently about another child who died in a closed car. The parent had planned on being in the store for only a few moments and didn’t calculate just how quickly a closed car could get hot in the sun. Surely this was an accident but the choice made to leave the child, was tragic.
We have military men and women fighting for our country day after day and rarely does their sacrifice make the news, unless it was something out of the normal activity. All these incidents bring pain and grief that sometimes takes a life time to overcome and sometimes even a lifetime isn’t long enough.
Our world is filled with sadness due to circumstances we cannot control. It just seems bizarre to me how we can cause pain for ourselves and other through the choices we make, and sometimes it’s through a cruelty we can’t understand when lives are snuffed out because someone is having a bad day!
Why are we so careless with our lives? There are those who choose use drugs or abuse their body with alcohol or nicotine. And while it seems irrelevant, we choose to eat foods we know are not good for us and we choose to not exercise. This is another opportunity to make a choice about caring (or not) of our very fragile lives.
When you add to this the opportunities we squander to be kind to those we love, acquaintances, or those who are different from us—- be it race, religion, political preference, or even a disability, we’ve found another way to inflict pain when it’s already so rampant.
I encourage you to look at your life and the lives of those around you. Pain has a way of happening to all of us. It’s the nature of life, regardless of race, religion, gender or ability or disability. It doesn’t matter how prepared we are, even for those who have been ill for a very long time. When pain is inflicted from death, it is heart wrenching; while accidents always catch us off guard, and completely turn our world upside down.
What would you do if in a momentary freak accident, you lost someone close to you? Are you taking care of the relationships formed with family and friends? Our next breath is not promised. Tell those you care about, you love them. This moment may be all you have. You may never have another chance.
Photo Credit: https://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-photo-still-life-bunch-bright-yellow-flowers-rudbeckia-brown-vase-image34155155