Thursday, December 14, 2006

Somewhere Out There

Somewhere a woman in her 30's lies comatose, the victim of a catastrophic heart attack. She was programmed that way, familial heart disease. Her five small children visit every day with their father, hoping and praying. Today her toe twitched. Her husband has renewed hope, but the neurologist says there is none.

Somewhere a woman sits alone in a nursing home. No one has visited her in weeks. She has no idea that she wasn't supposed to make it, that her family had decided on a "terminal wean" from the ventilator. They were actually disappointed when she kept breathing on her own. Who's going to take on care of mother now?

Somewhere a woman sits in a rocker in an empty nursery. The twins should have been born last month. She knew something was wrong when she hadn't felt them move that last day. The ultrasound revealed what she already feared: no heartbeats. What she hadn't expected was the news that her unborn babies were captured on ultrasound holding hands.

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Life is not fair. Many of us are told that as children by our parents, but it's a lifelong struggle to be comfortable with the concept. People get angry, and look for justice when really there is no way to equilibrate their losses. I've heard it said over and over that people don't believe in God because this or that happened, and that a "just God" wouldn't allow such things to occur.

In the end, it all comes down to faith. I don't understand why bad things happen to seemingly good people, or why miscreants seem to get chance after chance. I suppose that in a fair world, there wouldn't be much learning. After all, one can't learn to walk without first falling down a few hundred times. The best I can do is believe that all of this unfairness has a greater purpose.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

That was deep. I'm going to have to come back and read it in a little while, and post a better comment perhaps.