No Getting Past It

I'm an unabashed news junkie, and check the headlines several times per day. The running joke is that when Wifey shares something she's seen or read, my reply is "I know already." Well, yesterday am, she was checking the news and told me about a tragic story from Upstate NY -- a limo carrying 18 people crashed, killing all the occupants as well as 2 leaf peepers in a parking lot by a country restaurant.

I was stunned -- we plan to be leaf peepers in Upstate NY in just a few weeks. It could have been us. This am, I read more details -- four lovely sisters were in the limo -- celebrating the 30th birthday of one who was recently married. D1 was married last year and celebrates her 30th next month. Again -- this tragedy resonates.

I started wondering about the surviving family members. There's never getting past anything like this.  I lost my Dad four days before I turned 21, and never "got past" it. I've lived a wonderful and full life, of course, but losing a loved one never goes away from your heart.

I'm FaceBook (tm) friends with Richard, the man who built our house. He and his wife Jennifer met at UM and married, and built their dream home here in the 'hood where Richard grew up. Jennifer was a former local beauty queen, and smart and talented. They visited Italy and fell in love with a villa there, and returned determined to recreate what they saw here in the tropics of Miami.

They did -- they bought, cheap, an Andrew destroyed house, and knocked it down, and spent two years. Richard told me they even set up a wood mill on the property, to custom cut all of the roof rafters.  The finished product was lovely -- Wifey and I joke that maybe only 2 people who ever visited here didn't like the house -- many people say it's the nicest they ever visited.

And Jennifer and Richard weren't planning on kids, but were blessed with 2 -- a boy and a girl -- lovely blondes like their pretty Mom.  We got to know the family pretty well -- Wifey would call Jennifer to ask questions about why she decorated certain ways, and Richard always answered my questions about sprinkler timers, and the fish pond out front. And then they moved to West Palm Beach, and we mostly lost touch.

Until...this model family became the subject of international  scandal. Jennifer lost her mind, and shot and killed the then high school aged kids -- both musical prodigies -- and then herself. Richard, who was divorced from her -- discovered the grisly scene.

I saw him a few months afterward. He was visiting his parents, who lived in nearby Deering Bay, and was driving his childhood 'hood. We greeted, and he knew immediately I knew of what happened, and he saved me with "Dave -- there is nothing to say. I just always really liked you, and was glad you and your wife bought this house -- to make your own memories."

I see on FaceBook he stays involved with his kids' high school -- endowing a scholarship in their memory. He also posts daily photos of sunrises -- I guess his way of showing that even in the darkest tragedy, the Big Man gives us all a new day.

I just don't see how one suffers such a profound loss and keeps going on.

In my law career, one family, from Ecuador, always haunts my thoughts. Betty lost her daughter, a superstar, in an apartment fire, and her middle son was horribly burned. The boy recovered nicely, though, only to die years later from leukemia. I remember meeting with Betty, a trained psychologist in her native country, after the second child's death.

I complemented her strength, and told her how much I always admired her. She shrugged, and her eyes had an empty look. "Who can understand the plans of Dios?"

I guess that's the only answer -- the Big Man decides if you go on after a tragedy, or not.  All I know is my soul hurts this am for those folks near Albany. May they find peace.