gone too soon

Last Thursday I celebrated 22 years with my husband. On that same afternoon a friend lost hers in a light plane crash.

Devastating. A word I've thought, said, typed more often since then I probably ever have. 

Devastating.

I've been struggling so much with this one. We don’t know them that well, but the time we've spent with them my husband and I felt such a connection, a meeting of like-minded souls which has become very rare as we've gotten older. I know they felt it too.

If we’d lived closer I've no doubt we would be close friends. When we have seen each it’s always been warm and empathetic. We laugh at the same things.

They have two young children. We have two young children. The horror of having to guide your children through the loss of a parent as you suffer your own inconsolable grief is terrifying.

They were soul mates. We are soul mates. We both think they were one of very few couples we've met whose relationship seemed to operate similar to ours. They were partners. We are partners. They loved each other dearly. We love each other dearly. The reality that such a treasured person can be taken from you is sobering and horrific.

Devastating.

And also, what the actual FUCK?

I will never understand how a man – a warm, compassionate, loved, positive, energetic man, a father and a husband – gets whipped away on a sunny afternoon while hundreds of wife-beating, double-crossing scum live long into old age.

If I was religious I could put it down to ‘God’s plan’, which I should not question, just ‘trust’. This may be why I’m not religious.

But I am spiritual (it’s possible, really it is), and I have been thinking a lot these last few days about destiny and fate.

Was it always his destiny, while building a life, a marriage, fathering and parenting two children, making plans, hoping, dreaming, that he would leave it all too soon, too soon for anyone?

Was it always her fate to be a young widow?

And while I’m at it, was it coincidence that two of their dearest friends were planning to visit them this last weekend, so that they were the first to arrive after she got the news? There to guide her through that first surreal, unimaginable 48 hours?

I don’t know the answers to any of this. All I know is there is a patch on my heart rubbed raw for her, for her children. My tears are but a drop in the ocean of their grief.

Devastating.