The First 48…hours of the rest of your life

Every Thursday night I watch A&E’s “The First 48″. For some rea­son it is one of my favorite shows because I find it intrigu­ing the thought process that could lead some­one to harm another human life. But last night, I watched an episode that has really stuck with me.

It was about a woman in her 30s and her 10-​year-​old son who were mur­dered around 11 pm by a teen aged boy while his friend looked on. Her 2-​year-​old daugh­ter was in her crib at the time it hap­pened. The boys left her alive and she was there alone until her father came home from work at 7 am the next day. It dawned on me that this baby was left all alone at the site of such a grue­some scene.

I couldn’t help but to think about the fact that this baby likely cried her­self to sleep and woke up the next morn­ing not know­ing where her Mom was. The thought of that just broke my heart. The father was dev­as­tated and couldn’t believe that his fam­ily was now gone. I found myself empathiz­ing with him so much that it was par­a­lyz­ing.

The rest of the night I felt guilty about going about my reg­u­lar activ­i­ties. It felt that same way when the Columbine tragedy broke news. When that hap­pened I could not fathom it. I spent hours watch­ing every bit of cov­er­age. I felt guilty then for hav­ing a life to go on with. Some many young peo­ple had lost their futures. So many things they never got­ten to expe­ri­ence. How could I go about exist­ing as if noth­ing hap­pened? I real­ized that it was unhealthy to con­tinue to think this way.

While I still find all these things extremely upset­ting, the dif­fer­ence between now and then is that I coun­ter­act any neg­a­tive feel­ings I have about the tragedies that hap­pen in this world by focus­ing on the pos­i­tives. My per­sonal belief sys­tem is that death is not an end. So I share that with other peo­ple. These types of things always make me reflect on my own mor­tal­ity. Not about my death. But the peo­ple I leave behind.

I wouldn’t want them to feel guilty about going on with their lives. Even when bad things hap­pen whether or not we are per­son­ally affected or not we can­not freeze up. We have our lives to keep liv­ing. As the say­ing goes “Life is for the liv­ing”. And although it may be the first 48 hours sadly after some­ones life has ended, it is also the first 48 hours of the rest of our lives. So the ques­tion is: What are we going to do with it?

Thanks for read­ing,