Bob

There are no coincidences. There are no accidents. These two axioms were indelibly printed in my brain by one of my middle school teachers, a wonderful woman we called Mrs. S.

My mother had a new fellow and a student intern last winter. About two weeks after the student started working with my mother, Mom asked me if I remembered a family that went to the same catholic grade school my siblings and I all graduated from. I said I did and she told me that her student KB was nee KG. K and I were not in the same class but we were in the same Girl Scout troops for many years, sharing many trips and adventures. My mother caught me up on what K had been up to since we lost tough after high school. And K was understanding when my mother rearranged their work schedule many times to take care of things related to my brother’s death and my mother’s need to take time off. My sister and I both “friended” K on Facebook.

When K graduated this June, she got a job working for my mother’s company and was assigned as my mother for her fellowship year. Unfortunately a week after she started working, her eldest brother died. He was ten years older and thus already away in college by the time K became friends through scouting. Like my brother he was a Naval officer, proud of serving his country and having put himself through school. He had returned home safely from tours in the desert but in a tragic accident in eastern Washington, he left behind a guilt-ridden wife, two darling (injured but recovering nicely) sons, and a host of family and friends.
For three weeks my mother and another colleague split K’s work, working late every day and some weekends too. Then my mother took a day off, knowing that it would necessitate her working that Saturday, to attend the funeral. A friend told my mother that she didn’t have to go, that K would understand. But they did not know the old connections.
The funeral was difficult. To be back at a church we once attended, surrounded by old acquaintances and young men and women in military service uniform, to see the ceremony at the national cemetery, lacking the precision of the guard that buried my bother but reminiscent of the times my brother served at funerals for veterans during his college years, to see the grief of another family and know that there’s nothing that could be said or done to ease the pain.

I can be present for K but I know there is nothing I could ever say or do to ease the suffering caused by the loss of her brother. I wish there was.
I wish there was.