As this work week draws to a close, we have been reminded just how fragile life is.....one moment it's here, smiling for the camera and ten minutes later, it's gone...snuffed out by a senseless act....I speak of course, of the young Corporal, the very young soldier....who was also,a father and a son,....whose life ebbed away as his body lay fallen , after two wounds were put into his chest by a gunman......pictures on social media show him smiling for the camera , standing beside a pretty blonde, in a photo op just minutes before....his life ahead of him, stretched out to fulfil his accepted role as a son to his parents, a dad to his son, and possibly a husband to his girlfriend.
I've been lulled into a sense of complacency when it comes to my son being in the military....I blame that on the fact that in the six years, he's never been deployed, never been in battle....well, not an official one, just when he's out 'in the field' and they're practicing.....I'm sure this young Corporal's mother, also felt the same way...he was a reservist....not active in the military every day, mostly on weekends and maybe a few weeks until recently.....I'm sure that when she said goodbye to him, promised to look after his son, look after his dogs while he went on an assignment in Ottawa , that they all thought was a treat....standing guard at a memorial....a guard that had been assigned after a few daring teens urinated on it a few years ago....before that it only happened at Remembrance Day.....I'm sure that his mom didn't think it would be the last time she'd ever see that beautiful smile of her son.
In August, we were grandparents expecting two new grand babies in the coming months.....one was coming from our daughter....the other from our son and his wife...everything was going well, not necessarily with our daughter, the mom....but the babe was safe, we thot....safe and growing ...kicking and moving....we visited our daughter on the Monday....she smiled as she rubbed her tummy ( as pregnant mothers do) and commented about how active she was....yes, a wee baby girl that daughter had already named Trinity....the next morning, not even twenty-four hours later...that little life was snuffed out after our daughter fell from a ninth floor balcony...90'...the consequence of domestic abuse..yes, that little life was silenced.....
People take these lives we are given for granted....we get lulled into that complacency.....we assume that life will follow the usual path of being born, growing up, becoming adults, taking on responsibilities that adults do, starting our own families, raising our children, becoming grand parents, retirement and then after living a good long life...then death...then death will come. These previously mentioned situations are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how lives really don't go according to the plan in our heads. Circumstances change, accidents happen, horrible murders occur....we have no control over it really....it happens in the space of a breath.
We think we'll be ready, but we never are....to have our affairs in order, to say our good byes, we think that we'll have time to make things right....right with our family,right with our friends....right with God....obviously we don't always get that opportunity.
' Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapour that appears for a little while and then vanishes away.'
~ Marie
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