Unfulfilled Lives

I vividly remember the morning of April 15, 1984.  I was in Sacramento with my then wife, Susan, visiting friends Jim and Myra.  Susan and I had recently moved from Connecticut to California and we were trying to find our way and establish ourselves in the Golden State. Our friends Robert and Michele, who were living in San Francisco, allowed us to stay with them which made things a bit easier.  Around 11 AM Robert had called me and without indicating anything said, “Call your parent’s immediately”.    These are times when one’s heart sinks into the pit of one’s stomach. I called home and I heard my mom and dad’s voices, teary and I thought my grandfather had passed away, but what he said was utterly stunning.  My middle sister Deanne (25) and her friend Lisa (23) had been in an accident in Palm Springs and they both had died. I immediately started crying and throwing the phone. 

Susan and I drove back to San Francisco, took a flight and my dear friend Beth, her mother and grandmother picked us up and brought me to my parents.  Beth’s sister Jessica (27) had passed away a few years earlier from leukemia and she provided comfort to us throughout this strange dream. 

I remember helping my parents to pick out the white casket, I remember my mother’s non-stop crying and all of my relatives gathered at my parent’s home.  I remember my dad’s father, walking and crying and I remember my mom’s mother, who I’m not sure was really able to take it all in. I remember all of the balloons released at the cemetery.   (In June of 1984 my cousin Terry (25) shot himself, but all we could tell my grandmother was that he went away to work in Alaska, as we weren’t sure how Grandma Minnie would handle having another grandchild die before her).  

I remember my sister Robyn and her friend Cat, who were also in Palm Springs, telling us how the police knocked on the door of my parent’s condo, with a bag, asking if Robyn recognized anything; and Robyn reacting by screaming. 

Deanne and Lisa were bright young women, full of promise; my sister was to become a primary school teacher.  Some months after she died we received a call from a school in Japan, where Deanne had applied; apparently she had been accepted to teach.  I’m not sure what Lisa wanted to do with her life, but whatever it was, I’m sure that she would have been terrific at it.

It all comes back to me because I’m staying with my parents, it is 30 years later and I wonder, but also because of the horrific accident which recently occurred in Orland, California killing ten young people and causing great trauma to many others.  The ten young people included two who were recently engaged in Paris, the twin sister of another, and those who were going to go to college, bringing pride to their families and friends.  How will these people be remembered and what would they have done with their lives? The children on the bus came from poor backgrounds, maybe the first in their families to attend college, surely it would have meant so much to their families to see them graduate. 

With a deep sadness and tears welling up in my eyes, I ask, “why”?  It’s not only about my sister and Lisa, but of all of the children who have unfulfilled lives.  If there is a God, then why do children and other have to die so young?  I have no answers.