Life Must Go On

Tragedy touches everyone.

As I heard of Friday's tragedy at an elementary school in Connecticut ... I was on my way to a friend's home to walk with her as she dealt with her own personal loss. No less tragic. Loss is loss. There is an emptiness that will never be filled the same way again. Yet life does go on.

I have had a friend and a close relative that are fighting cancer. Different cancers. Different prognoses. Different all around. But a disease has invaded their body and they are waging their own personal war between good and bad. Good does not always win over evil. Life isn't fair. Yet we must fight to win what we can. In the hope that life will go on.

I contacted an old friend out of the blue. Her response to me was, "I'm in a crisis whenever you contact me ..." A ten-year relationship that she was in had just ended. This is a friend that knows how to love. She hands over her heart and loves like there is no end. There is such risk in loving so completely. For her heart is not just broken. It is shattered. Yet life must go on.

Another long-time friend wrote to tell me that she walked into work one day and was told that she was being laid off. It came out of the blue for her. She is just in the process of picking up the pieces and creating a new life for herself after a 25+ year marriage ended. She was a full-time mom throughout her marriage. She now has to support herself. She found a 'perfect' job for her. And it ended. Without warning. Yet she must forge onwards.

People that I used to work with have lost their spouses suddenly and unexpectedly. People that are my age have passed away.

It has been a year when people at arm's length from me are suffering great loss and devastation. Yet life around them goes on.

It is the people that are left behind or supporting those with devastating health issues that I think about and wonder how they are coping with their side of the loss.

The family of the shooter in Connecticut. How much support are they getting as they suffer so much more than the loss of their loved one? Will they have the support they need to help them through these dark days? The families of those who lost their lives so tragically and so unexpectedly, as they went to school that one fateful day ...

There is much that we will never know. I can never fully understand or feel what another is going through. All that we can do is stand beside our friends and family and hold out our hand in the hope that they will grab onto it to keep them above water when the tide comes in. And it will ...

Life must go on.