"Why"?

The continuity of one's day-to-day existence is a fragile thing.

You expect each day to be much like the last in the ways of normality, but occasionally the odds throw in a "monkey-wrench" to upset that. And usually that occures when there's an unexpected death in your family.

Death itself is an aspect of life, and one that I can accept on many levels. If one is in poor health with an incurable disease, or a person that has an illness of the physical self and does nothing to refrain this condition from getting worse, you naturally expect them to someday succumb to death. My own daughter was like that. She had diabetes and didn't properly take her medication. She didn't want to be diabetic. She wanted to live a life like any perfectly healthy person would, and, because of that, her condition went too far and she died.

Even my knowing this myself, and urging her (uselessly) to stay on her medicine (but knowing she wasn't), I knew that eventually it would all catch up with her. Even so, when she died it was a shock. But...it was an inevitability that I could understand.

The deaths I cannot understand are those who are senselessly murdered, or take their own lives. This was the sort of shock I received just yesterday when I was told that one of my favorite cousins, a mere 41 years old and with three children, took her own life.

This was a good person. This was a "fun" person. This was an intelligent person. This was a beautiful person. And I do mean that last one literally as well. Her half Italian ancestry gave her the features of one of the most beautiful women I'd ever known.

It's been said that the most powerful word in the English language is: "Why". Why did such a person with all of these things going for her decide to just tell everyone "good-bye", go into another room, and kill herself? "Why" were her problems so great that she couldn't face them by enduring life? "Why" didn't she just ask for help.

There's no answer. There may never be an answer.

Lisa, you will be very missed, especially by those that DID care.