Marine Tragedy A Pieta Moment That Reminds Us No One Is An Island

So much of life is about loss. It goes without saying that a parent’s loss of a loved one, especially a child, is unfathomable. As it must be in the case of the 7 Marines & a sailor lost in a tragic weekend training exercise off the San Clemente coastal waters. How young and full of life was one particular officer whom I recently had the honor of seeing graduate IOC school a few weeks ago at Quantico.

Still hard to imagine the families’ grief as I cannot imagine such loss suffered by any family after a son or daughter passes on before life was fully lived.

And yet we also see such loss in the daily course from abject poverty, invisible disease, and inhuman violence. Is all we can do is mourn and embrace the tragic loss as if acting out our own personal pieta? As Mary did with Jesus in her arms after God Himself was taken down from the Cross He carried? It’s been said, “when we die, we die alone.” Not so sure about anyone really being an island the longer I live. Not after seeing too often this tragic part of life all of us will surely experience.

Davd Soul