Every time I turned around this weekend, there was death. It was in Norway and London. It was all over the local news, with bodies found behind grocery stores and boaters driving into piers. And it was a bit closer to home than I preferred, as a friend of mine lost someone to a drunk driver and a former coworker was gunned down in a murder suicide while leaving work on Friday evening.
For the most part, I wasn’t personally connected to any of these, with maybe the former coworker being the exception, but our acquaintance was rather vague since she worked at a different branch than I did and most of our interactions were over the phone and through help desk tickets. Regardless, all of these events just seemed to mushroom into this huge black cloud of darkness and grimness that has plagued my mood throughout the past few days.
It’s strange because I can’t exactly explain how I feel or necessarily justify why all of this should affect me. It’s certainly not something that I could use as an excuse to, say, call off of work or stay in bed and pull the covers over my head. It’s not personal.
But it’s a grim look into a really crappy state of human affairs and that could have it’s toll on anyone. Sure, we all go on with our lives because they weren’t people we knew but every once in awhile, that reminder of what happened or the thought that there are people suffering because of senseless violence or stupid decisions creeps back into the recesses of your brain and that sadness just settles into a small part of the heart.
It is sad and painful to think of how far that kind of suffering reaches and most of the time, you just don’t let it get to you but then you remember that people are out there grieving and you remember that it wasn’t so long ago that you grieved and you really don’t wish that kind of pain on anyone.
