Rants & Raves

I went to a wake today. I didn’t even know the people who had died, but I work with one of their daughters. They died in a fire at their home, allegedly set by some asshole in a domestic dispute. It’s no consolation that the suspected arsonist died as well.

A few of us at work left during the afternoon to go to Brooklyn. After a little while we found the church where the wake was being held and sat down. I’ve been to other wakes before, but I haven’t been to one very recently, and I never sat in a Baptist church before. I felt strange, as I didn’t know any of the people there, but I knew that most of them were family. Yolanda and Herbert had 18 children and 44 grandchildren, and it was obvious that most of the people there were related. It was actually a blessing that there were so many kids, since it helped to take my mind off the tragedy in front of me.

Who is stupid enough to endanger other people’s lives in their own petty disputes? Nothing is so important that you should take away the lives of people who aren’t part of the situation. What gives you the right to do such a senseless thing? You’re not God, nor should you pretend to be. There was so much love at that wake, and to take the source of that love is the STUPIDEST thing anyone can do. I can’t even do justice to their memory by berating this moron who had a beef with his daughter’s boyfriend.

We sat there for about an hour, and during that time I thought about a lot of things. How much I love my parents. How I’m glad that we didn’t end our last very recent conversation with a fight. How different people cope with loss. How these children won’t really be able to understand what happened until they grow up some more. How they should be able to live as kids for now while they still can. While I didn’t outright cry (after a weepy childhood, I usually find it somewhat difficult to cry) my eyes teared up constantly, and I was wondering why I was getting so emotional. Then we went outside and saw my co-worker and had a good talk with her. I don’t know if this is selfish, but I felt a little better knowing that for now she was all right and able to laugh at certain things. I could tell though that there were tears fighting to come to the surface and that she was holding them back.

What a blessing to have such a support network of family and friends. As I have said, there was so much love and togetherness in that room. I hope that in my small way I have been able to help balance the senseless wrong done to them. My thoughts and prayers are with you.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 21st, 2005 at 8:54 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.