I haven't posted since last June for a number of reasons which I will not list here. But that doesn't mean I"ve not been writing, or that there haven't been a few things on my mind. Unfortunately, much of my thinking has been sidetracked by a tragic event that occurred in mid-July 2011 just a few miles west of our mountain home. I wrote the following two days after that event and include it here now, pretty much in it's original and minimally edited form. I don't know if this signals a return to regular posts, but it might. I've done a lot of thinking since, thinking that has been clouded by recent events in my own life (more, perhaps, on that later). Here's what I wrote in the aftermath of that tragedy:
A man lost his wife and three young daughters three miles west of here on Highway 130 two nights ago. I almost lost my cousin, John.
A severe and long-lasting thunderstorm dumped an inch and a half of water in thirty minutes in the Brush Creek drainage and the rain continued for another three hours. The creeks that formed that drainage rose very quickly and the Forest Service decided to evacuate the campgrounds that were in danger of being swept away by the ensuing flash flood. Meanwhile, a tree or trees tore loose and fouled the culvert for South Brush Creek at mile marker 55. The stream, now moving over five times the water for which the culvert was designed tore out the road, leaving a 25 foot wide, 9 foot deep torrent into which the aforementioned family in their VW van, and my cousin, who was coordinating the evacuation, pitched headlong in their cars. Their vehicles were rolled 200 feet downstream ending in a snag of debris amidst the fast moving water. The man driving the VW got out; his family didn't. My cousin sat terrified in his half-submerged car for two hours until our neighbor and local fire chief and two other responders pulled him free, saving his life.
In an instant, John was swept back to when he, then ten, and his father rolled in their pickup truck into the Platte River and John watched his father die. He is now in his fifties and, while remembering all of that, managed to pull out some dry paper and write a farewell note to his family. The note, fortunately, never had to be delivered. But the event and the memories it stirred will doubtlessly be with him the rest of his life.
In an instant everything for that family of five changed horribly forever. And what of that poor father, a doctor from Colorado Springs? He was released the next morning from the hospital to live with this night for the rest of this life. Will he recover, mostly, or at all? Who knows? He lived, his family did not. What on earth is left for him?
And who can ever imagine that there is a God watching our every move, listening to our every request, perfect in his knowledge and execution of everything, who allows such things to happen? How could any loving deity allow such a ghastly end for this man's three young daughters and their mother?
I cannot believe that there is anyone or anything in control. We are each, individually and ultimately, on our own in this world of the unforeseen and unforeseeable.
