The Ebb and Flow of Life

I really don't know what to write, other than this picture may be the saddest thing I've ever seen. 

 

Honestly...in the face of something so incomprehensible, so monstrously tragic, what can possibly describe it? Even the title of this post, which I grabbed from an old professor's email on simultaneous happy and sad events in his family, seems almost glib.

Two things to me are certain, however.

1) Roughly 23 years ago, that was me swathed in a blanket lying next to my mom, with my dad looking on. Now fully grown and a grad student 2500 miles away from home, it is incredibly sobering to imagine the sum total of my life thus far blown away into nothingness a mere 23 hours after I got the chance to fulfill the promise of that life, just waiting to be lived.

2) I am not an A's fan. I only knew of Pat Neshek as a Twins reliever. I wasn't aware he was on the A's, or even still in the league. But to go from the highest of highs (the birth of your child) to a professional high (improbably winning the AL West) to the absolute lowest of lows (the unexplained death of that child) all in the span of 24 hours is not something for which you have to be invested in that particular person in order to feel overwhelming sadness. And as I looked at Neshek's timeline, particularly the picture of him and his wife with their son, I could not stop a lump from forming in my throat, nor the corners of my eyes from getting wet.

RIP Gehrig John Neshek. Thoughts and prayers are with Pat Neshek and his family tonight. It seems equally glib to quote a movie, but I think Lord of the Rings put it better than I ever could:

No parent should have to bury their child.