What are we talking about today?

I'll get back to theme days once I find a groove of posting regularly. In the meantime, most of my posts are about some variation of books, bikes, buses, or Broadway. Plus bits about writing, nonprofits, and grief from time to time.

This blog is mostly lighthearted and pretty silly. It's not about the terrible things happening in the world, but please know that I'm not ignoring those things. I just generally don't write about them here.

11 October 2010

I Could Do Without Some Bits of Life

I blogged already about the suicide at UT a couple of weeks ago.

Two days later, I logged onto Facebook and saw a status from my cousin Missy that a police officer in our hometown had unfairly had his life taken. I followed the link to find out what happened; he was on a training ride with other members of the bike patrol when he was struck by a hit-and-run driver and instantly killed.
Quite a few members of my family are in local law enforcement in Greenfield; it seems that we all have to do either food service or law enforcement once or we aren't allowed to come to family reunions. So, I was sad for my cousins who had lost a friend, and sad on general grounds that an officer was killed. Slowly, more messages from my FB friends back home came up on my screen, and I finally heard the truly shocking (to me) news: The officer's wife was a high school classmate.

Obviously, all the way down here, I couldn't do anything. I can't even buy one of the stickers that Missy (who is one of the most thoughtful people on the planet, BTW; I don't know how I missed out on those genes) had printed up & sold to benefit the family. I couldn't lay flowers on his squad car or stand and watch the funeral procession go by as the rest of Greenfield did on the day of the funeral. I did what I could, which was send a message of sympathy to his widow on Facebook. And I logged on to the local news sources the day of the funeral to see the coverage. (The pipe & drum band was amazing, but I hate to hear them under these circumstances.)

I didn't even know the officer, so it would probably be reasonable to expect that my life wasn't affected by this at all. Except, I'm not reasonable. And this was a bit too much for me. Two young lives were ended in two very different ways within two days of each other. I signed off of FB because I couldn't be my normal, cheeky self that Thursday.

I know that people die. I acknowledge that this is part of life. I know not all people get to live to old age. I know that some people are left alone, tragically, much earlier than expected. I know the threat of being killed in the line due to criminals who recognise no limits is a daily risk that police officers take. And I further know that if I stop to be sad every time someone I know loses a loved one, I may never be happy again.

But that doesn't stop me from being cranky about it. A high school classmate, the same age as me, with two young children, is left to raise them alone because of one person's stupidity. She had to bury her husband on what would have been his birthday. Some days, life totally blows.

Please love your loved ones today. A lot. And let's hope I don't have cause for another tragedy-related blog for a while, okay?

2 comments:

Tessa Quin said...

That's terrible! Poor wife and kids. Things like this (unusual deaths by accident/intent) rarely happens in Iceland, so I'm always stunned to hear from a blog friend who is close to such a case. There has been one murder in Iceland this year, and it's so unusual that the papers reported almost nothing else for weeks.

Am I wrong to be a little scared of the USA? >.< I mean, I think I'd be scared to live there. But I'm not so sure that the crime rate is a lot higher there than here. There are, after all, only 300,000 people who live in Iceland.

Su said...

I would imagine that overall, the crime rate is higher in the US than Iceland. But, the news sensationalises everything so that one incident can be reported so many times that it seems like it's worse than it is. The crime rate has actually been on the decline for the past few years.

All that to say, I'm not scared to live here. That doesn't make you wrong to be scared, of course, but I think if you had to live here you'd adjust. Humans are remarkably flexible! :)