Three Responses Are All You Need

It’s taken me an entire lifetime to learn I only need three responses if something doesn’t set right with me.

1) To the pompous: Listen and when they are done say, “La-tee-da.”
2) To the fix-it or nosey busy body: Let ‘em ramble on and when they are done say, “Yes ma’am,” or it could be a “sir” but usually it’s a female. This isn't the old world polite "Yes ma'am," it's the tongue-in-cheek kind.
3) To escape the control freak and manipulator: Say, “I don’t know anything about that.”

Death

Throughout recorded history and from every corner of the earth, we have made death the ultimate human tragedy using it as a central theme in an endless stream of real life headlines, operas, movies, television, and books. Because it is a painful experience to say good-bye to those we love, we have created ceremony upon ceremony in the hope it will ease if not erase our pain.

Eventually, though, the natural grieving process gives way to letting us move on; while death caused by accidents, massacres, murders and deviate acts leaves life-altering chasms in our hearts. Sometimes our hearts heal and sometimes they don’t. Not even the passing of eons seems to erase the pain caused by acts of cruelty and terror.

We are still reminded of the Christians who were eaten alive by Lions and of those who have been bludgeoned, buried alive or burned at the stake over thousands of years. There are still many among us who were imprisoned in Hitler’s camps of terror and still awaken each day to the memory of a human sea of living death.

And who was more terrified on that day of horror September 11, 2001? Was it the four pilots who could see what was happening, the passengers who were gripped with fear, or the thousands of people who blinked on one side of reality and awakened on the other? Where did these people go? For those of us who are left behind, how do we stop crying? Does not this give voice to yet another reason why it is important to put a new face on death altogether?