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 a family, from her extended family, 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.
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 take a lifetime 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.
There seems to be, every summer, news clips about children who die in a closed car. The parents plan on being in the store for only a few moments and don’t calculate just how quickly a closed car can get hot in the sun. Surely these are accidents, but the choice to leave the child this way, can be tragic.
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. These are other opportunities where we choices about how we take care of our very fragile lives.
In this middle of all this grief, there is still another area of our lives, we rarely think of unless we are intimately involved. Those parents who give birth to children with disabilities. Sometimes disabilities come from accidents we were totally unprepared for. Yet isn’t this another way we are affected by our ‘very fragile lives’? It takes a lot of resolve, dedication, determination, love and commitment to render all that is required to make lives as normal and happy as possible.
I encourage you to look at your life and the lives of those around you. Death and circumstances that seem to cripple us, has a way of happening to all of us. It’s the nature of life. It doesn’t matter how prepared we think we are, even for those who have been ill for a very long time, or accidents which always catch us off guard. Events like these can completely turn our world upside down.
What would you do if in a momentary freak accident, you lost someone close to you, or suddenly had to care for (or become) disabled? Are you taking care of the relationships formed with family and friends? Our next action or breath is not promised. Tell those you care about, you love them. You may never have another chance.