apathy stew

There's a man at work whose son is about to go into hospice. He's 49 and dying of cancer. I don't have kids. I can't begin to imagine the pain of watching your child suffer as he waits to die. I didn't know what to say. That there's somewhere else he has to be? I hope that's it. Or is the pain for nothing? It's at these points that we turn to god and say, "He's got something planned." It's so easy to be independent of higher powers when life sails along, but the moment you need an explanation just to be able to get through one minute of your day, how convenient--and necessary--it becomes to attribute the tragedy to god. What about the hugely reverent people who invite god into their lives on a daily basis? While at times grating, is there something to accepting god at every twist and turn so that when truly tragic things happen to you, you've avoided hypocrisy? Or is it more than that? Existentialists have it easy. Who can tell?


Also tragic, two 17-year old boys sped through the streets of Denver in a stolen SUV yesterday afternoon. The boys were in police pursuit. According to news reports, the two boys ran multiple stop signs, signaling the SUV's horn to warn other cars. The pursuit came to an end when the SUV crashed into another car, wrestling the cars onto a front lawn and killing the second car's driver. The driver was a piano student at the University of Denver, on a scholarship from China. The image is sickening. What I don't understand is why the police didn't have their sirens on. They were in pursuit of a stolen vehicle in a residential area, packed with pedestrians, intersections, and traffic. What were they thinking--the police and the teenage boys? Was the chase worth all this? It makes me so angry.


Also tragic, the West Warwick fire. The toll is up to 86. Just imagining any one person at the nightclub puts a lump in my throat and a clutch in my stomach.