No words

When a writer has no words, a strange quandry takes place... one keeps searching for the words. And one must simply understand that sometimes words are inadequate. Sometimes life's mysteries are unfathomable and unexplainable, and remain such.

I find myself at such a loss as I grieve the death of a beloved parishioner and fellow musician from my church. I am trying to explain my grief to my mind and heart and my family: the grief that comes when a good man-- a faith-filled man, a family man--dies and the whys point to suicide. There are just no words. Somewhere there is a reason, but somehow it escapes us. Sometime we might understand, but that someday seems a long way off.

In the past when similar tragedy has struck, I have found some "villain" to blame: an addiction, an illness, a crushing heartbreak. Here, the story has no apparent villian, just some invisible specter or shadow that we cannot see.

And so I must turn to the God of mystery, and the One I cannot see, to commit all things tragic and incomprehensible to his deep, abiding, unfathomable, unexhaustible Divine Mercy.

May the souls of the faithful departed, through the Mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.


Copyright 2005 Patricia W. Gohn