Our busy and creative minds are always working in collusion with guilt, finding new ways to tear up the soul. The hole left by the death of a child will never go away. That takes some getting used to. But what we have to remember also is that the hole can get bigger. Guilt and anger eat away at the sides of that hole.
More people can fall in without constant care and attention.
One thing we can do as friends is to shore up the walls of that hole, spend our energies trying to prevent the tragedy from enveloping more and more people. In the end, it is my undying hope that my little friend Maura and Calvin Smith and all of the others know that we are forever changed by their lives and their deaths. We spend the rest of our days groping for a way to see through the sadness, anger and guilt, and it may never happen. Nonetheless, we owe it to the ones we lose to keep looking, to keep fumbling in the dark for meaning, love, a little joy and all of the things that seem to be lost when the young, shining ones leave us. Express Publishing Inc. All Rights reserved.