In Memoriam

And so it goes. Someone goes to work or off to the market, maybe remembers to hug a loved one on the way out the door, maybe shares a laugh or mutters a little apology. Maybe a scent lingers in the air, or a list or a jacket is left behind. And then, before you know it, they're gone. The bomb goes off and the children are gone. The killer walks into the museum and the son you bore or the brother you looked up to Just. Isn't. There.

How odd it is, whenever we lose people we love; that awful process of discovering their absence by repeatedly imagining we've found them, just whisking around the corner, or passing in that battered old car they were so proud of. How odd those first few days, when it seems as though, if we try hard enough, we can make time stop; and then, reverse. If we just strain hard enough, we can alter the curve and turn of the world and make everything whole again. If we could just....

Tonight, the family and friends of Stephen Tyrone Johns mourn. And so do families and friends of the men and women and children of the town of Bathaa. And so do others of us in this little village called Earth. The world is too small a place to admit hatred; life is too precious, too fleeting to allow the upper hand to those who wish to divide us by sowing confusion, anger and hatred. They can cause pain; they will not win.