So Many Times To Cry

I am about to mail a card to the university I am doing my master's degree with. It is for the family of a student who lost his life tragically just before the holidays. The tributes to him from those who knew him were loving and beautiful and I wanted to express my sympathy to his family. It also got me thinking about everything my own family has been through and is still going through; the fear, the loss, the not knowing what will strike next or where. I hope my heart was in the message on that card because I cannot feel that anything less would suffice; a family has lost a son and brother, his parents their child, and friends and coworkers a person they knew they could count on to be there and help get the job done. It brings strongly to my mind the tone of voice and expression on my father's face when he said to me one day, "No parent should ever have to outlive their child."

In C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia, in one of the books, he has his lion, Aslan, respond to the question of the child Lucy by saying that no one is ever told what might have been, yet I can understand the wanting to understand the full repurcussions of such a loss. Who knows how many lives this young man would have touched in the years to come?

How much more love would there have been in the world had he survived? How long would he have lived if his life had not been so cruelly and unnaturally cut short? How many children will never be born? How many lives might not get saved? How many friends may not have the hand to hold, the shoulder to cry on, the person who is always there they so desperately may need in the days to come? Has the nation lost a president? Has humanity lost a lone voice of reason during times of crisis? Have his parents lost the only child of theirs who might have saved them from war, from the predations of old age, from poverty?

While life continues apace for all of us left behind, there is now a void that can never be filled. It will remain forever, throughout the many ages and vagaries of time; his place, his space, his moments and his thoughts and actions - gone. A miniscule vacuum in humanity has been created unnecessarily and will remain forever unfilled, unrealized and empty. His parents, family and friends will feel that vacuum for the rest of their lives, whether they remain completely aware of the absence or not.

All of us, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant, hold a very real and special place in this world and in the life of this world and no one's death or absence should ever go unanswered, unnoticed or unfelt.

Perhaps Heaven is a vast and sparkling silver ocean made up of the tears shed when loved ones are taken from us, no matter the circumstances or timing, and each soul missing from the face of this earth has its own ship to sail upon those salty, warm waters, kept forever afloat and in motion by the power of love.