Sorrow

C.C.'s nephew was murdered on the weekend. The news didn't take long to travel a thousand miles. One phone call and sorrow descended in a wave of inexplicable pain.

"I don't know how I feel," C.C said late last night. "Mostly numb. I think I should feel more. I'm angry that I don't."

"We don't come with a guidebook mapping out how to deal with something so tragic," I replied. "What if you don't judge yourself for not feeling something you don't know what to feel? What if you simply let the numbness guide you?"

His sister won't talk to anyone. She won't answer the phone. Take calls. In her grief she has shut down. Perhaps she believes if she doesn't talk about it, it won't be true. Perhaps she has fallen into the first step of grieving and is using denial to shield her from the enormous pain of her loss.

I want to help. I want to do something. Change something. Help somehow. I too want to deny this is possible. I want to believe it cannot be. I want it to be a miscommunication. A lie. I want to tell C.C. it's not true. I want to ease his pain but cannot lie.

Violence has ripped through the delicate filigreed network of leaves sheltering the family tree. The inconceivable, the unbelievable has happened. Violence, in all its brutality has settled in the branches. Impersonal. Without feeling. Without conscience. It is filled with malice. Riddled with disease, it claws at the roots of humanity, grappling for a footing in the story of the lives that have been intertwined since the moment of their birth.

Violence does not discriminate. It does not take sides. It sucks the air from around it, leeches out the sweet clear breath of the morning rising upon the dawning of a brand new day. It over shadows the joy of awakening, the peacefulness of sleep. Violence kills the life around it.

There is nothing that can explain why. Nothing that can take away the pain. That will happen in time. For now, tears must fall, hearts must break open and time must stand still before it can begin its work of easing the pain through grief and sorrow.

A young man is murdered a thousand miles away, and time shifts, the earth tilts. A life has ended and sorrow descends upon those left behind.

I have no answers. I want to ask, 'how can this happen?', but I know I can't. It has.

All I can do is be the arms of love that tenderly hold this man for whom I care so deeply, as he struggles to come to grips with something no one can ever understand.