Life in the (Widow) Hood: Bearing Witness, Bearing Pain

I waited on a line early yesterday morning on a quest to get some bagels. As I neared the store entrance, I could hear the sounds of the music from inside, and the opening notes to an old Billy Joel song, “Only the Good Die Young.” And I started to cry, as I had been doing pretty much all weekend.

When I first met my husband many years ago, one of the first life stories he shared with me was that one of his close boyhood friends had died in a terrible car accident when he was in his early 20s. My husband could not listen to “Only the Good Die Young” without invoking his friend's name and memory. This early death had a profound effect on my husband, who always lived his life as fully as he could, knowing that it could be wiped out in an instant. And of course, we know the ending to that story, as my husband, too, died too young.

My 25-year-old son was a pallbearer this weekend at the funeral of one of his closest childhood friends. His friend had died suddenly, which we know today means that the pain of life caught up with him and he was unable to figure out how to outrun it. Watching the many friends, young men who I’ve known since they were little boys, bravely carry their friend to his final resting place split my heart open into a million pieces. Watching his parents grieve as they said goodbye split it a million times more.