Loss

How to resist nothingness? What power
Preserves what once was, if memory does not last?
For I remember little. I remember so very little
Do I believe in the Resurrection of the Flesh?
Not of this ash.
I call, I beseech: elements, dissolve yourselves!
Rise into the other, let it come, kingdom!
Beyond the earthly fire compose yourselves anew!
Czeslaw Milosz

I am reeling a bit the past few days. Last thursday, I found out through the facebook grapevine that a young girl that I babysat as a teenager died in a car accident. V was 16, almost 17. I hadn't seen her in years, since she was 4 or 5. Looking through the articles about her, there was an overwhelming rush of information. The funny, charming, bouncy little girl I had chased around her backyard had grown into a lovely, lively, caring and talented young woman, and then just as suddenly had died in a moment of carelessness. I don't understand why, but this has left me unbearably sad. I didn't know V well anymore, I adore her family but hadn't been in touch with them in a while. But still, I can't focus, I spend my lunch flipping through facebook pictures of a ghost girl, I spend nights tossing and turning and trying to reason out some sort of comfort and end up crying.

I am trying to find some way to understand this, and other losses. Christmas always has an unspoken sadness, as my dad's small family gathers and silently notes my grandmother and uncle, who died well before their time. I try to think of the possibility of resurrection, to reach back into my christian roots, but that is not much comfort. Maybe its an immature inability to delay reward, but the thought of an ambiguous eternal heaven does not make up for the fact that the grandmother who I so resemble in temperment and looks was gone before I could speak. I'm told often that my uncle the engineer would love talking about my research, would be a good person to ask about electronic questions, but in this life I will never know. I can't compare eternity with the present. I only know that in the here and now, what I want is more time with them, what I want is all the time in the world, in this wonderful life.
I hope that V's parents are finding some comfort, however small, in the thought of their daughter in heavenly peace, at the possibility of reunion someday. I hope and pray against all reason that some sort of grace is real, that we will not be parted forever from those we love. But I ache because for me-and I fear for them-at this time, it is not enough. It seems that throughout life you accumulate loss after loss. They add up, year after year. It seems so unfair that a 16 year old is one of them. That her parents have to bury their child. That her friends have to navigate sixteen, an awful and exhilarting time, with one more burden and one less shoulder to cry on. I think about everything I've experienced and learned and done since I was sixteen, about how even though there are awful and terrible times, on the balance life is rich and sweet. What breaks my heart is that V had such a short time to take it all in.