There Are No Answers

This is not my usual posting day. No, I regale you all with my wit and wisdom (or lack thereof) on Thursdays, but I have had this post working in my head for a few days now.

There are events in everyone's life that fail to make sense. No matter how many ways we look at them, analyze them, break them down, we fail to understand. We are only left with "why?" And, more often than not, these events involve a death. A death that takes us by surprise, wholly unawares. It's a shock to the system. It rocks us to our core. We are left asking only one thing. One question that will never be answered. Can never be answered.

Why?

We are asking ourselves that question now. We've been asking it for a week now. We are asking because we need to make sense of something that, on its face, appears impossible...improbable. We ask because someone dear to us passed away suddenly. He was 39. Just turned 39. Three weeks ago he celebrated his 39th birthday with his wife and 2-year-old daughter. 39. And he's gone. Just like that.

He will never see his daughter off to her first day of school. Never see her go on her first date (and intimidate that unwitting suitor), go to the prom or graduate from high school. He will never beam proudly as she gets her first job. He won't be able to walk her down the aisle as he prepares to give her away to a man who loves her nearly as much as he does. She will never really know her father. How much he loved her. How much he adored her. How much he wanted to give her the world. No, she will have to rely on the stories and reminiscences of "a hundred uncles" in order to shape what she knows about him. And, although it will help, it falls dramatically short of the real thing. And that, to put it bluntly, sucks. Sucks huge.

I normally say that I can't imagine any of this, but, unfortunately, I've had to. We've had to. It's all I can imagine now. To be confronted with one's mortality with such a gut-punch is such a rude awakening. And it forces you to put things in perspective. So I hug my kids a little longer. I linger a few more minutes after putting them to bed. I make sure I tell them I love them a few more times each day. But, when I lay down in bed at the end of the day, I am still left with one question, as rhetorical as it might be.

Why?