Life asked Death,
Why do people love me,
But hate you?
Death replied,
Because you are a beautiful lie,
And I am a painful truth.
One day when I was in kindergarten, I walked home from school to find a huge, gaping hole in our backyard. My dad had decided to dig a storm cellar because my older sister was deathly afraid of storms and went into hysterics every time the tornado sirens would howl. He thought having that hole under our back porch would calm her fears. It did better than that, it scared off all the tornadoes. Never in all the following years did we ever have to seek shelter from a tornado in that cellar. When I was young, I'd head down there with all my favorite stuffed toys, and some cheese and crackers every time the tornado watch ticker came across the bottom of the tv screen. It was a lark.
I no longer consider tornadoes a lark.
Not after Hoisington, Greensburg, Joplin, Moore x 2....
Not after I think of scared little kids who were counting down the hours until summer vacation, thinking of swimming pools and barbecues and tee-ball, huddled shoulder to shaking shoulder in a hallway.
I can't think of that without bursting into tears. A few more days and school would have been out.
Why?
My daughter-in-law went in for her scans today. They saw something.
Why?
Tonight I want to be in a bar with a bunch of others, our eyes peeled to the TV watching news reports of the tornadoes and motioning to the bartender to keep them coming until we forget why we're there. I want to drink until I no longer care why. I really do.
But God and I decided two years ago that now was the time I needed to be sober, I needed to be STRONGER.
I don't know why. I am afraid of what may be coming.
But I will stay strong and I will stay sober.
Because.
