My older brother died when I was nine years old. He rode his bike through a stop sign and into the path of a semi-truck travelling 60 miles per hour. This was 30 years ago, yet I can still hear the brittle shell of my childhood shattering when I heard the news and the tinkling as the shards of all things stable and sure fell around me.
I didn’t eat for nine days. I numbly watched “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” on repeat, day after day, until the VHS tape gave out. One day as I laid on the couch, staring into the abyss, my dad set a plate of carrots in front of me. I recoiled, but when I saw the pleading helplessness in his eyes, I took a bite and forced myself to chew. The food hit my stomach like a pile of stones, but when a shred of relief crossed his face, something other than pain for the first time since the accident, I kept eating. That was my first step back into the world of the living.
Many of us recently felt ourselves similarly shattered as we confronted the brutal murders of four members of our community. We yearn for an end to the grief, but anyone who has suffered a devastating loss knows that “getting over it” is a myth. No amount of time passing can erase the marks we leave on one another’s hearts.
The hardest part of a tragedy to endure is its senselessness: the raw injustice of the world’s cruelty and indifference and the frightful realization of our own vulnerability. Platitudes aside, not everything happens for a reason. That can be hard to swallow. However, we can find meaning in how we respond to tragedy. The gift and glory of humanity is our ability to find redemption in suffering. From the ashes of loss, we extract love, hope, courage and new life. Alone before a wicked world, we gather and find refuge in one another’s basic goodness.
It is in these times of greatest struggle that we come to know what is most noble within us.
While we each grieve in our own manner and time, I find consolation in nature. Seeing new life bursting forth from the previous years’ decay reminds me that we are not alone in our mortality.We are each but a fragment of something larger. Just as our cells continually die while our bodies persist, so too do our bodies return from whence they came so that life itself may persist. Though we die, we are a part of something eternal, and there is solace in that.
Faced with death, I’ve learned to cherish life’s innumerable, simple joys to their fullest: the sound of autumn leaves swishing under foot, the day’s first sip of coffee and my son’s smile when he completes the perfect block tower. This is no indulgence; it is essential. Savoring small, everyday joys gives us strength and reminds us why it’s all worth it.
Every good thing in life, every love, aspiration and achievement, is projected against the backdrop of our ultimate demise. The best we can do is to embrace the preciousness of each moment. To love this life wholeheartedly, even as it slips through our fingers. This is how we honor those who have gone before us and how we affirm, on behalf of those to come, that this is yet a world worth being born into.
We humans are tragic things, fated to yearn for life while knowing the certainty of our annihilation. That we press on regardless, and not only survive but grace the world with ever greater depths of truth, beauty and love. This speaks to the unassailable resilience of the human spirit.
In the years that followed my brother’s death I lost many more family members, friends, homes and pets, but I learned to persevere and to live with a broken heart. I know that, together, we will make it through this and that by choosing life, over and over, we can mend what’s broken and bring meaning to our losses.
-Ryan Urie
About the author:
Ryan Urie is a columnist at the Moscow-Pullman Daily News. He has lived in Moscow since 2004 and graduated with a master’s degree from UI.
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