Blog o’ Gnosis

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.