Death Walks Wherever the Hell She Wants To Walk

Last week, a kid at my daughter Madeleina's school hung himself. Good looking kid. They sent a picture home with each student, I'm not sure why, but looking at it he looks like a smart young guy. A 7th-grader with blond hair and good looks. What makes him kill himself? By hanging, no less? Why? He was just 12 years old. He had nothing behind him and everything in front.
The kids at the school say he was bullied, that it was a sort of copycat suicide like the girl in Massachusetts a couple of weeks ago. But if that was so, where were the teachers? Where was I? Why didn't I know some kid was being tormented?
I saw him on the line for getting into his parents' car to go home. He didn't look bullied or tortured. I didn't see anyone push him or beat him or hurl killing insults in his direction..
Still, something was up. Something was bothering him. A lot. Enough to think hanging himself would make it better. Bad choice.
Today an 18-wheeler crushed a small car about 300 feet from my house. I couldn't get information from the responding police. But I've got two kids and a daughter in law who drive small cars and I was praying it wasn't one of them.
Last night I woke and a cold air blew through. Not regular cold air. The cold air of someone who died who's making their last rounds. I've felt it before. It chills you to the bone and doesn't let you sleep and you just sit up waiting till someone calls you to tell you which of your close relatives has died. It's generally only a matter of minutes.
But last night the cold air wasn't followed by a phone call and I finally, after an hour or two, went back to sleep.
Then the accident up the street today.
I was on the way to Walmart when they wouldn't let me pass. An hour later, on the way back, the street was open again. And while I was on that street a tow truck hauling a crushed red car went by. I knew that was the death car. And I was relieved that none of my kids or Sara own a red car.
But if it wasn't my kid who died, it was someone else's kid. And that's horrible. Someone else is mourning today and I'm happy it's not me.
I'm a bum.
I'm not happy but relieved.
That's fair but not fair enough because some other parent lost their child today.
And that one kid committed suicide a couple of days ago and one kid was killed at about 3 PM on a country road today--well, this world was never fair, never has had compassion.
There is no reason. It's just what it is.
And there I was, happy it was not my kids dead.
I still feel like a schmuck.