11:15 PM 5/30/2001

            I won’t sleep very well tonight.  I will worry about the family of a person I never even knew.  I am saddened by their loss, concerned about their well-being, hopeful their future will turn out well.  Sometime in the very recent past, my second cousin, Ruth, was killed in a gas explosion.  I am not sure about any of the details yet.

            She is leaving behind a husband and four children.  The gears inside of my extended family are already in motion on some sort of plan.  I am filled with grief over this family I have never met.  They are related to me in a distant way, and I try to imagine with life will be like for the husband, for the four children who will now have to grow up without a mother.

            What is it like to suddenly, completely, horribly lose a loved one?  I don’t know… I have never lost anyone that was close to me.  I know I will experience it someday in my life, but I don’t know if I could even survive the coldness, the darkness.  It would probably push me over the edge.

            Thinking back on my life, things like this were why I started to lose my faith in any sort of deity.  Here I am, 21 years old, no kids, no significant other…  Ruth was 34, she had a husband and four children.  Why does someone like me deserve to live while someone like her, with so much to care for, have to die?  Life is unfair.  I am not offering myself up for sacrifice here, but death really makes you think about these things.  I hope, for her sake, my religious beliefs are wrong and there is a god.