Sometimes life slaps the bad stuff on people hard. Like the feeling you get when you walk out of a warm house into bitter winter temperatures outside, biting you in the face with a mix of surprise, breathlessness, and piercing pain that envelopes you. That harsh winter came to our little community the day after Christmas when a drunk driver ran into four local teenage girls, killing two and injuring two more. There is no way to describe the horror that many of us felt as we heard the news.
How do you make sense of such a tragedy? How does a community move forward when the lives of so many families are altered forever? Unfortunately, it seems that in the news these days these questions are presented too often and have become way too familiar. Something needs to shift on a small level and on a large level in our society for lasting changes to occur.
I will say, straight up, that I honestly don’t believe you can ever make sense of an accident of this magnitude, so I won’t even try to address that question. But as far as a community moving forward, I think I have seen a glimpse of that answer.
Since that fateful night, the community has come together in amazing ways. I have watched and observed remarkable human spirit, and heard many other stories of unbelievable generosity and kindness. There was the memorial service in which a small church offered its help with serving food and the kitchen help had so many anonymous gifts of food and beverages from the community that they were able to deliver huge quantities to the local homeless shelter after serving 700 people! There were so many people coming in to volunteer with ANYTHING, a teacher told me she finally gave some people Kleenex to hand out because they needed to be needed…to contribute in any way possible.
The four girls were all members of their freshman basketball team. The first basketball game after the accident took place with record breaking crowds to show support of the team and the families. The cheerleaders sold pins during the event to raise money for the families. Most incredible was the comments from one of the victims father at a gathering after the game, quoted as saying: “Don’t waste or misplace your anger”. Don’t dread Christmas of 2010, because he and his family won’t. “And I’d like to talk forgiveness and all it stands for, because I truly don’t believe you can ever overcome the grief without it.”
There was the silent auction and spaghetti feed in which droves of people donated items, big and small. As you find so many times in life, the people who had the least to give donated what they had, and the feelings of community were overwhelming to anyone walking in the door of the gym.
So in a time of sorrow, grief, confusion, and sometimes anger for many, the basic human nature of love is shining through, breaking up the bitterness of the cold winter wind. It has been said that the dew of compassion is a tear (Lord Byron). As this small community sheds collective tears I can only hope that compassion will help heal. Watching the events unfold I have seen and believe in the power of community, love, and the best in people at the worst of times. But yet another part of me asks this question: Why does it take tragedy to unlock the type of compassion we should be practicing every day?
LIFE LESSON? Plain and simple: PLEASE don’t drink and drive.
Three passions have governed my life:
The longings for love, the search for knowledge,
And unbearable pity for the suffering of [humankind].
Love brings ecstasy and relieves loneliness.
In the union of love I have seen
In a mystic miniature the prefiguring vision
Of the heavens that saints and poets have imagined.
With equal passion I have sought knowledge.
I have wished to understand the hearts of [people].
I have wished to know why the stars shine.
Love and knowledge led upwards to the heavens,
But always pity brought me back to earth;
Cries of pain reverberated in my heart
Of children in famine, of victims tortured
And of old people left helpless.
I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot,
And I too suffer.
This has been my life; I found it worth living.
adapted
This truely a person dealing with grief and sadness that has the inner strengh and will be begin to take positive feelings and actions and have them resinante so others can feel the difference of change that come with dealing with grief and sadness.