Elgan speaks
...and her words thunder across the land

I feel their grief.

Monday, Aug. 3, 2009
5:46 p.m.
Just when you think that your life totally sucks and that things can’t get any worse, you have an experience that puts everything back into perspective.

Yesterday in a chat room connected to an online game I play, a 16-year-old who is generally pretty cool started complaining because his mp3 player, which he’d bought with his own hard-earned dough, had croaked. He was bereft without his tunes, and this gave him reason to vent about all the problems in his life, which really aren’t so geferlich, as my mother would have said once upon a time.

In an attempt to assuage him, I said that no matter how awful we think we have it, someone else has it much, much worse, a bit of wisdom imparted to my by my mother, again, many years ago when I was but an adolescent myself. You can read all about it here.

Anyway, I must take a page out of my own book and dose myself with my own medicine. On Sunday night, a car spun out of control on the bridge crossing the Massawippi River that joins with the St. Francis by the university and one person died, while another remains in the hospital in serious condition. Today I walked into town to do some banking and mail a package to a friend in Finland (the postage cost more than the contents) and passed by the spot where the car struck. There were three bouquets of flowers nestled against the girder and a piece of paper taped to it with a picture of the young man who died and words of grief from his friends and family.

I read the sign and looked at the dent in the metal, the same bridge I smacked the Volvo into 10 years ago, but lived to tell the tale (let’s hear it for Volvos and seat belts), and felt a great anguish for the family and loved ones of the deceased. I walked away, realizing that I have no right to complain about anything.



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