Death, Tragedy, Theodicy

I have been around death. Most of the death I have been closely touched by have been the kind of death that is viewed as a joy, a relief. After long, drawn out battles with cancer, I have watched aunts and uncles waste away and live with such immense amounts of pain that when the final moment comes it comes as a blessing. No more pain, no more suffering. And for the family, the grief is actually lessened because it is a far harder thing to live daily in sight of a loved one in pain than to live without that loved one, secure in the knowledge that regardless of anything else, at least the pain for them is gone. Death, yes. But tragedy no.

It seems I had been lucky avoiding the tragic sort of death until recently. I have had friends cut down capriciously in the prime of their lives. 1999 actually, that happened to nine people I called friends. But I was living abroad then. I missed their deaths. They were already gone, because I was, and when I came back it wasn't so hard not to see them. I shed tears at their graves and with their families, but there was no immediacy to it.

My experience with death this week has been new for me. One of the best people I have ever known, my friend, Kevin Mundy, died this week. He had been in a coma for eleven days, but things were looking up. There was activity in both hemispheres of his brain. There was hope. Then he developed a blood clot, and died. This was a tragedy. And it was senseless. Kevin was a good man. He lived well, faced anything life threw at him head on, and his good humor and affability were infectious. People were better for having known him. And he died.

I feel it fairly appropriate that theodicy is only two letters away from theidiocy. Because, if there is some divine presence in this world, it was an act of pure idiocy to deprive humanity of someone who did so much good, even when he didn't intend it. His death was senseless, it was tragic, but it happened. And now the only thing to do is move on.

I feel guilty for how bad I feel about Kevin's death. Because as bad as I feel, and as hard as Kevin's loss hit me, it hit many far worse. I lost a friend. But a mother and father lost their son. A brother lost his brother. A wife lost her husbund. Kevin was my friend, but he was closer to many, especially my own brother whose grief I can't even fathom. I have so little right to my grief.

I mourn Kevin's death. But more, I mourn the fact that no one else will know him. I mourn the good that would have come, had he been with us longer.