The skies around me are getting blacker, and blacker. The wind is howling, the trees are shuddering. The birds are silent. The other kinds of birds, well, they won't stop tweeting for anything.
I opened my MSN page today to the headline "Singer Amy Winehouse Dead at 27". As a person who watches the news carefully (and makes up some of his own from time to time), I'm quite used to deaths and disaster. But this one strikes me on a much deeper chord than your average celebrity death.
Today is the day following the twin attacks in Norway, the day that a madman killed 85 people in a youth camp. He stood there and mowed people my age down while others tried, and failed to escape. Some survived by playing dead or hiding. They were the lucky ones. Some played dead, only to be shot again. Some never knew what happened. The first ones to go were the lucky ones, the ones who were last were not.
Today, a singer that was only 27 is dead. She isn't the first celebrity to die, but she's one of the first to grow and become famous in my generation's era. Amy Winehouse had one hit, "Rehab", that was played over and over again on the radio to and from school, on my friend's iPods, and on the TV shows that we watched at home. And now she is gone.
Today is the day that a high-speed bullet train derailed, killing eleven. Today is the day after an 18 year old was killed by the heatwave that struck our country. Today is the day a few weeks after a boy was brutally murdered in New York, and another was struck by a car and killed in MA. Six years ago on this day, 88 people were killed by three bombs in Egypt. Six hours ago, the sky grew even darker.
Today is a day of mourning. My mother often says "Everything happens for a reason." Today is not a day for reason. Death is rarely positive, and to lose so many in such a short span of time makes us all try to look for it, yet when we do, we do not find it.
Maybe the sun will shine, but not until tomorrow. Even then, we can only hope that it shines at all.
Rest in Peace Amy, Oslo, and Leiby.
