A man I met is grieving the loss of his daughter, recently killed in a car accident when a mindless man driving a truck rammed into her car, stopped at a red light.

Disasters happen all the time, no doubt, and also befall poeople I never met. Fortunately, good things also happen; these happy events also befall people I know and many others I do not.

In the grand scheme of things, maybe that's the way the world balances itself out: some people experience good and others are hit by disaster.

In a manner of speaking, in the hierarchy or tragigedy, the worse off are the ones that are no longer with us: the daughter for example.

Then there are the people who are left behind, they feel the loss. It is incomprehensibe, especially if it is totall out of order - loss of a child, for example.

Trying to understand, to find a kind of reason behind the unjustifiable, is veritably grasping at straws trying to inject reason into the tragically absurd: what is there to say or think of the loss of a 29 year old who had stopped at a traffic light and is now dead?

Some people look to religion to find solace. It is God's Will but, does God's Will offer a justification for an act of unspeakable horror? Does the child go to heaven? Even if so, that doesn not justify its unnaturally short sojourn on earth.

Does the bereaved one place the grief in God's hands? Even so, that will not change reality.

At least, in these cases there is a lot of goodwill from all around and people are ready to advise "you have to be strong, you have to carry on..." -- but often, these friendly pep-talks are just another version of teh ubiquitous "there, but for the grace of God, am I".
After, all, to what purpose should, say, the father of the dead girl pull himself together and carry on? What is there, from a purely emotional point of view that justifies being strong - other than life itself - the act of beating death? Does one say "I will live on to remember her"?

I am fortunate at this stage to say, don't know.

I think there is only one remedy - if remedy it is: closure.

And closure, if it is to introduce some kind of balance between the the event and its cause, must be congruent with thevalues ofthe ones left behind.