On Easter Sunday Jim and I attended the bed-side funeral service via Zoom of our nephew's 38-year-old wife. There were 50 or 60 of her closest friends online. She had died on Good Friday, her time of death was called at 3:33 p.m.
For the next three days the hospital kept the machines going to protect the organs she had wished to donate. Truth is, this young woman was pretty much an angel. Her favorite saying was that people she didn't know were just friends she hadn't met yet. She was loving on a rare scale, always joyful and full of laughter.
The timing with Good Friday and Easter strike me as having great meaning, and yet, I don't really understand what that meaning is. Our sweet girl suffered an asthma attack. She stopped breathing for five minutes, irreversibly damaging her brain. After days of medical attention, it all came to a heartbreaking end in a Chicago-area hospital.
Her husband is devastated. Our family has prayed, cried, and held each other. Then the final straw came when our brother-in-law had a heart attack while still out of town where his daughter-in-law had been hospitalized. Thankfully, he's going to be alright after a stent was installed, but it was the final one-two punch, further bruising everyone's tattered spirits.
When Rabbi Harold Kushner's three-year-old son was diagnosed with a degenerative disease, he was faced with one of life's most difficult questions: Why, God? Years later, Kushner wrote a straightforward, elegant contemplation of the doubts and fears that arise when tragedy strikes. Most of us know of his book, When Bad Things Happen To Good People. But even this wise man couldn't give us the answers we were seeking.
I can personally attest to the fact that bad things do happen to good people. Not only do I have the evidence of the past week, but in 2001 my husband, Jim, was paralyzed in an accident that left him with constant pain he's dealt with for the past 21 years. In spite of strong faith and family, I find a cloud of sorrow has descended over us all. We miss our sweet girl, we worry about our brother, and as we thank all those who have been praying for the lovely young woman we lost, one question bounces around ceaselessly in our heads.
Why, God?
Nancy
