A cycle of anger and guilt.

It's been a tough week for a colleague of mine. He's experienced just about the worst thing that can happen to a person. His 18 year old son has died, apparently by his own hand. I don't know any of the details, and it's not my place to enquire, just like it's not my place to reveal anything else about it to you. This single fact alone is enough to portray the magnitude of his personal tragedy. What I've gone and done is what almost any person tends to do - try to understand how he might feel by relating the experience to my own memories, but nothing has ever come close (and I fervently hope nothing ever will).

The only remotely relatable experience is a Boxing Day over 15 years ago when we heard that my 15 year old cousin had died of a previously unknown heart condition. Now, this was terrible news and dreadfully upsetting, but I was only just into my teens and didn't see Simon that often, so I was unable to grasp how my uncle must have felt, just like I can never understand how my colleague feels. Recently another cousin of the same family died due to drugs related problems - the uncle in question having now lost both sons has only a daughter left, a daughter who has herself recently given birth to a daughter - funny how life keeps going round like that, isn't it? In a similar vein, my grandad passed away just before my first daughter Katie Erin was born, and now that her sister Emily Karen is on the way, we've lost nan.

What's difficult to come to terms with is how angry I was at the pointlessness of my cousin's death. He was young, strong, smart and full of potential, and all he's done is cause untold grief to those who he loved and who loved him the most. While not on the same scale, there was a minor resurfacing of this anger when hearing the news of my colleague's tragedy. It seems careless to me to leave behind your loved ones with such a gaping hole in their lives. But, on further reflection it seems callous of me to judge them in such a way - in Christian's case, he never intended for the drugs to kill him, so he's worth remembering with love, not anger, and in my colleague's case, who am I to feel this way without having the slightest clue to this young man's circumstances and feelings?

So, guilt inevitably follows anger, but I can't stop these feelings any more than I can stop the events from taking place at all. It's a shite state of affairs probably best not ruminated on for too long. One thing that these tragedies do for certain is to convince me to squeeze every last drop out of life while I can, which is as good a lesson as any to take away, I guess.