New Avenues

"I didn't ask for this," I said to God, standing on the deck. "I didn't ask for this." My grown daughter was drunk and plowed into the rear of a vehicle parked over on the shoulder of that four lane, killing the 60+ year old former school teacher who'd gotten out of the vehicle and was standing in front of it, and her new daughter in law who was seated in the back seat. The older woman's daughter, another passenger, was injured as well. It's amazing my daughter survived. That was a few weeks ago. Three families explosively met and their lives have intertwined. All are good families. Every single life altered forever. Three women who will not--because they are dead or incarcerated--will not see their daughters marry. They won't see their grandchildren born. Their menfolk mourn, and will do without them. Even though my daughter survived, there are nonetheless three families whose members died--or might have well have died--in that horrifying instant. I didn't ask for this. My wife's leukemia. My estrangement. I've probably actively gone out looking for the unfortunate, bizzare things that have filled my life. I didn't ask for her leukemia, but I accepted it as part of what God dishes out to us to test us. But this--I didn't ask for this; there was no Divine Intervention here, just a woman who wasn't able to manage what was going on her life and turned to booze and wound up killing two people because she couldn't handle her life. I didn't ask for this. The victims and the perpetrator--life has all dancing a macabre dance of grief and disheartenment. There is symmetry there, yes, but it still isn't right.