The whimsy of the self proclaimed invincible

An email goes out to all staff from the director with the subject line “sad news”
I open the email anticipating the usual shrapnel of bad news. A grandmother that’s slipped away in the hush of night or an infant born still to an anxiously expecting couple.
This time the news hits me hard… my throat clumps up… my heart aches and a tear finds its way to the corner of my mouth.

People looked at Mary V with eyes filled with green envy. She was young, beautiful, happily married and after trying for what seemed to be an eternity she finally became a mother. As many on lookers secretly wished they had her life she climbed the beaurocratic ladder and all the while somehow managed to remain grounded. Within the span of seconds I got flash backs to conversations we’d had about her husband playing with their baby. How he was so good with her… how he was soooo careful when he brushed her hair. I remembered thoughts I’d had about her when I heard she got promoted. “It must be nice to be one of those women that are in command of their lives… The go getters… The ones that carry themselves like they know what they’re talking about even if they don’t… Women whose demeanor commands respect...” I remember thinking her life must be perfect right here and now. She must be happy…

How I sincerely hope she was….

Because as of the second she received that news…
As of that moment when time stood still…
happiness became a thing of the past for Mary V.
Happiness now nothing more than a word… a rumor… an illusion for years to come….

Death…
A slap across the face that shakes off the whimsy of the self proclaimed invincible.

We often forget just how temporary we are and we get caught up in the little things… the things that don’t matter on a grander scale.

Mary V… She once had it all… today… she lost a big chunk of it..
A husband pronounced dead at the sight of the accident.
Thoughts swirled in my head…

"Her 3 year old daughter will never know her father... She won’t be able to run and hug his leg screaming “daddy is home… daddy is home!” after work…She’ll never get to beg him to play for just 5 more minutes on the swings… She won’t get to kiss him good bye on her first day of school or have him question her first date…. She won’t get him to give her money to buy the shoes her mother said were too expensive and she wont get to go car shopping with him when she turns 16…she won’t get to see him stand with his head held high and chest broadened as he claps proudly when they call her name at graduation…. She won’t have him to give her away at her wedding and she won’t have him to teach her children how the world was before they were born… not only that but she won’t even have him in her memories…. She’s too young to have created any or held on to any… she won’t have him… not cognitively, physically or emotionally… She just won’t have him.”

How Mary V will gather the strength to take this poor child to day care while drenched with the cloaks of sadness is beyond me. How she will manage to remain positive despite the circumstances or go on to lead a normal life ever again is a mystery.
I say normal but even normal is too big a word…
How will she be able to carry on the bare basics? The bare minimums?
How will she manage to breathe again…
Eat again….
or even sleep again….

I imagine she’s lost sense of time and is now in an abyss of numbness. A place where she can’t stop crying but must… Loosing a partner like that… so soon and so suddenly… so early…

Unfathomable.

I pray for Mary V.
I pray that the sadness won’t break her and overcome her spirit.
I pray for her...
... and shed another tear.