I am flummoxed, having just read the New York Times article about Amy Winehouse’s recent death. The end of the article states, Ms. Winehouse is not the first singer who died at the age of 27. Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain and Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones were the same age. [...]
Writing is such a solitary pursuit. Or rather, it is solitary only in a sense. I need utter stillness around me, and writing within that stillness I find all the ways I am connected with everyone else.
I was at it the other day, although my thoughts were elsewhere. I had just received an email relaying the sad news that my cousin’s son had been killed in a car crash. Another 20-year-old coming to a tragic, untimely end; a handsome kid that had just met his West Coast cousins a year previously, at a family reunion.
News like that, laden with the otherworldliness of grief, takes several days to work through one’s system. I was noticing how, after a couple days, the torrent of feelings had become manageable, and this fresh loss had become another thin layer added to the transparency of sadness I seem to carry with me.
Another year of losses, of big questions that elbow their way into the room and refuse to leave. A young man who grew up down the street and went to school with my kids was stabbed to death at a party this weekend. Two young men charged with his murder had a brother killed in Iraq at the beginning of the war.
What happens to kids? What makes one succumb while another one thrives? I don’t understand it, and all my pat answers, fears and suspicions merely mask the fact that I simply don’t know. I can’t keep my kids safe now that they’re grown, and the more beautifully they blossom the more I am aware of how fragile our hold is on this life we cherish.
