Feeling Blessed When So Many Others Cope With Tragedy

We all hope we never get "that" call.

It's part of what I do at work, following the tragedies of many others. Teens that die in car crashes, their lives cut short while their families have to carry that pain forever.

Now that I'm a parent of two myself, I find myself especially sensitive to cases of sudden death, especially for children, teens and young adults. The other night, in a piece I'm working on for next month, I went out to the remote home of a mother who lost her teen daughter a few years ago.

I walked away from the twenty minutes in her home forever impressed with her resolve over the daily reminders, some suttle and probably painfully obvious.

The silver lining may be that, in Eau Claire, we're all still "relatively" blocked from the pain and death seen in many other places in the United States. In our little corner of the world, parents tend to take care of their kids, putting in place an informal buffer zone to keep them from tragedy.

Of course, it doesn't always work.

When I walk away from talking to a parent that has lost a child or even if it's a news story involving death and someone I've never met, I usually feel the need to hug and hold my two children as tightly as I can when I get home.

There are examples of this all over the Internet. A couple of years back, a friend introduced me to the Miller family, out of Central Texas. Two days before I started off a refreshing chapter to my life, our Joyous Return to Eau Claire, this family had their lives destroyed.

It's actually become a very noteworthy video. Millions of people have watched it and, if you have children, you will cry by the end of it.

The Importance of a 5-Point Harness


Every time I hear this song, which even years after its release it still fetches strong airplay, I think of the little boy and how the family continues to cope with each hour of each day.

We all want to protect our children but, the older I get, I realize that I can't do everything -- sometimes it just falls in a plan greater than me.

As I work through all of the stories of tragedy, you know what? It does wear on me. I'm human. You can't just "turn it off" during news time.

Count your blessings. That gets said often. I'm still trying to make sure I not only count mine but I see all the ones around me.