Trying to make sense of the senseless
Something awful happened last night. A young woman, my cousin, was murdered. I don’t know the details. I don’t know that I want to know the details. I doubt that details would help. I didn’t know her well. It’s like that with your extended family. As kids you see each other at the obligatory family gatherings, once, maybe twice a year. You ignore your elders, as the young are prone to do, while your elders roll their eyes at the naïve self-importance of youth. Maybe you pass a few hours chatting, comparing notes on school and this teacher or that coach, and then you go your separate ways until the next family gathering.
Time passes and you wander out into the world. Words, stories, tall-tales and mundane minutia filter back to you about each other’s lives, primarily though the voices of your parents and siblings, with all the well-intentioned filters that go along with that. Collegiate victories of GPAs and scholarships, or the well-worn paths of relationships gone bad and good, first jobs and quit jobs and maybe a mad foray into the world of entrepreneurship, these become the stock in trade. It’s all so very normal and very regular.
What strikes me now is that what I recall about her includes nothing about her schooling, or her work, or romances. What I recall now is that she was so very, very alive. Not over-the-top, manic energy alive, but just brimming with a sometimes serious, sometimes cheerful, indefatigable sort of energy. She had a quick smile and offered it freely. In a world that so often seems populated by people who are dull, gray and can find no reason to smile, the loss of her quick smile seems that much deeper a loss.
It would be easy for me to lament how little I knew her and how I never will now, but death doesn’t give us easy answers. We had different interests and our lives were moving in very different directions. Some people we will only ever know slightly and, for better or worse, she was one of those people in my life. Her death saddens me, because I knew her in some small way, but it would be false to act as though my sadness resembles true sorrow. That right is reserved for those who knew her best and loved her the most, her immediate family and close friends.
It always seems that, in moments such as these, we’re admonished to put our anger away. Yet, of all the things I feel right now, the strongest is anger. I’m angry about the naked selfishness of the man who killed her. I’m angry that someone I remember as bright and good has been swallowed up by the great unknown that comes next. I’m angry because acts like this have become, not the exception, but something so regular that we are numb to them, save when they touch us personally. I’m angry because someone will give inevitable, self-righteous counsel that my anger is wrong and I should seek to forgive and show compassion.
It’s only been a handful of hours since I learned about this and this is where I’m at right now. I’m sad and angry and I don’t know what comes next.
