Over Thanksgiving break, one of my best friends delivered her second baby! She was in labor for about twelve hours - bless her heart - and little Arian Sina came out healthy and alert and looking a bit like mommy. (I found out her husband refused to watch the delivery and stayed glued to the upper half of her body - even though he's in the medical field - and he went to the movies the day after the birth. But that's a post for another day. . .) So here we are, a 27 y.o. beautiful, loving woman who just brought a second human being in the world. She endured over 9 months of discomfort, pain, nausea (and many other gross bodily effects I could mention, but won't) and her gift is a new, healthy baby boy (followed by 18 years of pure bliss - ha). It's unbelievable, I'm so proud of her.
An hour later, I got word that a family friend's 31 y.o. son died suddenly and unexpectedly in his sleep. I was stunned. I felt like I got hit with a mack truck - within a span of 1 hour I went from feeling elated and excited for a new baby to feeling like shit for this unexplainable loss of life. What the hell kind of world is this? My family was pretty upset - not only for the profound loss and the grief they felt for their friend, but also because their faith and spiritual core was completely shaken. My family's not religious by any means, but I think with parenthood comes a certain level of spirituality. I won't understand it until I have kids, that's for sure. But I can imagine just as how a new birth will shift your world spiritually, the loss of a child will turn your world and faith upside down.
It is the ultimate tragedy: for a child to pass away before a parent. It goes against natural law. As my sister said, you can spend your whole life doing everything right and carefully with your children, and their lives are still not fully in your hands. There are some things you just cannot control. Like with everything else in life, you just have to do your best, know in your heart you did your best, and just hope for things to turn out as best as possible. Sounds pretty lame, but for some people, this is probably where the need for religion comes in. I still don't have the answers - I don't really need the answers - but events like these are certainly a wake-up call. What's that saying? Take a moment to smell the roses? Well, smell the roses, tell your friends how you feel, tell your family members you love them, take more pictures, eat that second piece of cheesecake, stop stressing, and a million other "life-is-short" cliches, but you know it's true. These moments remind me to hold the reins less tightly and actually sit back and enjoy this ride called Life. That's all I can do.
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