Most mornings I don’t mind getting up. This morning I thought about crawling back into bed and pulling the covers over my head. Then I decided that wasn’t going to work. Death stalks us all.

Alex Sapp a delightful 14 year old was killed last night in a snowmobile accident. He was with his friend, John Kovach. Alex is in a better place, but the world has lost a shining star. John will find himself in a bad place for a while and I can only pray he will learn that this was not his fault.

How do you deal with teens and death? It’s been a question I have spent many hours agonizing over. It started when my daughter was a ninth grader. The first death at school did not affect her much. She knew who Kim Brindley was, but she was older and they were not close friends. However, death stalked my daughter through high school. Memorial week-end her first year of high school she lost a dear friend, Kendra Lucas. A month later she lost her friend, Vada Jarrell to an auto accident. In September of her sophomore year she lost Jason Whitfield, who had been a gymnast when Jamie had been a gymnast. Followed two weeks later with the lost of Chris Jones, to encephalitis. December brought a plan crash that killed her friend, Sarah. By this time, she did not want to answer the phone for fear it would be bad news. I became her social secretary. By her junior year, her friend, Leesa Neubecker was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. Would it never end? Leesa, fighter to the end, managed to make it to March, 1995. So they were out of school by then. I still have trouble explaining why to my daughter. Her dear friend, Melissa, and the mother of Jamie’s step-son, died in September of a rare form of cervical cancer. While she was unable to say good-bye she did make the drive to Texas to be with her step-son and pay her respects.

Death, there is no easy answer. There is no rhyme or reason for who or why. I’m sure someone has a plan, we just never know what it is.

Alex, my favorite woodland sprite, I will miss you. Rest in Peace, go with the Angels.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 29th, 2009 at 7:45 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.