I had another series of thoughts planned for this week, but it will have to wait. The tragedy in Manchester just has me reeling. So many young girls lost, so many families in the horror of that grief right now.
So many girls that will never grow up, never get married, never have families, never experience all that their lives had promised. So many families – mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, aunts, cousins, grandparents…hundreds and hundreds of people who thought their world was one thing, and in a flash, it became another.
And to lose a child? Unthinkable. My heart feels ripped open when I imagine the pain they are experiencing.
What is wrong with our world?? When Mike was alive, we would try and make sense of it together. We had just moved to Hawaii a couple of weeks before 9/11 and the effort it took to wrap our heads around that was gargantuan. As it was for everyone else. But somehow, having him here with me, helped.
When I had Mike, I was able to find a kind of peace with the horrors of our reality. Not that I was ok with any of it – I just found a way to exist without allowing it to break me in half. Without him now though, it seems almost impossible. There is already that piece of me that doesn’t want to live in the world without him. That piece we all share, as widowed people, that we must deal with every day. But when tragedies like this happen, that piece screams loudest.
I can’t change what happened to those families this week. I can’t change the nature of our world where religions cause people to purposely cause this must damage. But I wish I could. I wish I could magically reach into the hearts of others and show them what real love is. What I have been blessed with, a love for all, a love for peace, for harmony on our planet. That is really isn’t hard. But I know those factions exist out there who want people who believe otherwise all to die. It almost feels like I live on an alien planet, but I don’t. It’s my planet, and those people are humans like I am, who somehow came to an opposite conclusion about what is right. It’s been going on for thousands of years with no hope for change.
True evil does exist in our realm. My heart, thoughts and prayers go out to every single person affected by this new horrific event. And to those already dealing with their own grief, because I know when these things happen, we all have our scars ripped open.