The Real Postgrad Life: Dealing With Tragedy

If you’re like me, you had a pretty heavy week last week. Sometimes bad things just happen in bunches and there’s really nothing you can really do about it. First and foremost, the Haitian earthquake happened. That was and still is truly terrible. A tragedy of the worst kind, but like a lot of tragedies that occur overseas in poverty-stricken nations, we can disassociate ourselves from the actual event to lessen the impact that something of that magnitude would have on changing the way we live. We can text in our $5.00 donation, maybe even do it a couple times, and feel that we’ve done our part in helping the recovery process of a broken nation.

Other times, tragedy slaps you upside the head and forces a change. On Saturday morning, I got a text message from one of my good friends saying that his cousin, Justin, died in a car accident the night before. I tried to shake the sleep from my eyes, maybe even pinched myself a couple times to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. Justin was a member of our church. I watched him grow up but because he went away for school and found a job farther away, we really hadn’t been hanging out that much anymore. Every time he came back home, though, I made sure to at least invite him to hang out.

I spent the greater part of that morning trying to find an actual news clip of the event. I wasn’t gonna believe it until I got some actual proof. It was too tragic an event, too random of an occurrence. He’s winning our fantasy basketball league, for crying out loud. He just made a trade that went through a day ago. He can’t really be gone. I just expected him to walk into our lives and make everything right again.

And yet, that’s not the case. Reality set in for me when I saw his screen name online, signed into his Google chat account. I quickly IMed, not sure what to expect. It was one of the most hopeful yet devastating moments I can remember. Much worse than professing your love to some girl via IM and anticipating her response. This time, the response would determine whether or not a good friend of mine is really gone from this world, moving on to the next. And fate would have it that his brother was checking his account for him. At this point, the surreal became the real.

It’s funny how it takes a tragic event to help you get a healthy understanding of what matters in life. In hindsight, I could have done so much more to show Justin how much I appreciate him. Justin was very driven. He poured himself into school and engineering, and secured for himself a nice job working for a military contractor about a month ago. Things were looking up for him and he was maturing so much. Yet, in his passing, we don’t associate him with his schooling and career. We do remember his hard work ethic and his passion for everything he pursued. We remember the relationships he’s built, the convictions he stood by and the impact he had. We remember his faithfulness, zeal and even his quirks.

Let’s not overlook what really matters in our own lives. Sometimes we get so caught up in living for achievement and success that we forget to cultivate the relationships we want to share life with.

So Cal is weeping for you, Justin Chang. We’ll see you on the other side. 9.26.86 – 1.15.10.