Groans Too Deep for Words

Small Town is weeping today.

Two days ago my friends got the phone call every parent dreads. Their son, a beautiful, smart, talented 21-year-old, had died in his sleep. At this point no one knows the reason; autopsy reports take 10 weeks, and until then there's no way of knowing why an apparently healthy kid did not wake up.

We don't know why, we only know that he won't be coming home from college, and our hearts break.

The death mores of our society are inadequate for this grief. We hug, and confess to each other that we just can't stop crying and are ashamed of our inability to control our emotions. We envy the African women who mourn their losses with keening that can be heard for miles. We wish we could rend our clothes and throw ashes on our heads but that is not our custom. We can only call each other and sit in stunned silence, wordless with the unfairness of this death.

Because that's what it seems--unfair, and capricious, and unspeakably cruel. He was a good boy. This is a good family. His parents were limitless in their love and made the good choices the rest of us hope to make as parents. No one could point to a single moment that might have predicted this boy's life would end so soon.

And still....

In this village that has raised this child, we share the grief because we loved this child and we know this call could have come to any of us.