My Mind Knows It

My aunt and uncle buried my younger cousin when we were middle school to Jr. High. I think he was 5th grade. She still had 4 children to finish raising. 4 who grew up not getting to know who we would be, all of their children not knowing their uncle. A friend of mine, as a small girl, was standing there when her big sister was run over by a car. She still had her whole life to grow up. Two married classmates from high school buried their teenage son from a car wreck. Both of my therapists were young ladies, pretty new in their marriages, when their husbands died. One at least has shared her son was 1 year old. My husband has a nice, a young lady who buried her son at about the age of 12 or 13. I was at the funeral. My mother in law buried her son, for who I grieve. She buried her son next to her husband, beside where she will some day lay. She spent a life time keeping him happy and healthy and well. And now I know she grieves. A boy I grew up with died in a car accident right after we graduated high school. It should have been the greatest summer of his life. Instead his parents buried him and finished raising their daughter. She grew up without the big brother she loved. My mind knows these things. That adults get widowed. That sometimes children die. That my pain and suffering is not the only suffering in this world. Even in the greater world, I live in relative comfort while children go hungry and adults die. My heart still grieves.