It Is Well

Sometimes there is a whole story to be told in just one look. And it's so hard, if not impossible, to translate that look back letters to be formed into words and put down on paper or typed onto a blank screen.

We were all standing around her bed, a little tiny pixie of a thing, she hasn't even blown out 7 birthday candles yet. She was in a c-collar, lying flat on her back, not even covered by a blanket, as it was causing discomfort to her many tiny broken bones. Someone had just told her that she had lost everything. Every single person in that car...every single person she loved and who had loved her back were all gone. In an instant. They had done everything right: worn their seatbelt, stayed under the speed limit...everything right and now they were gone and there was no one at her bedside and there wouldn't be ever again. And she looked at all of us, all towering over her bed with our stethoscopes hanging around our necks and she didn't say a word. Her eyes filled with tears that didn't even spill over onto her tiny white cheeks. She closed her eyes, shuddered, took a deep breath in and then opened her eyes--tears gone now--and nodded to us. And while you and I and everyone else in that room were asking "Why. WHY?!?" It was as if she had read every book on death and dying and bereavement. Like she had been preparing for this for 50 years.