Where's the Pause Button?

You know what the strangest thing about the disasters in life is? It’s the abrupt normalcy that life reverts back to after it’s over. You might not be normal inside, but for all appearances, outwardly, life almost looks the same... as if nothing had ever happened. Where’s the drawn out drama? Where’s the life shaken upside-down, nothing-will-ever-be-the-same-again evidence to do the tragedy justice?

When the stretcher is rolled away… there are still breakfast dishes to clean up from.

When the text comes late at night saying that your best friend is being rushed to the hospital… there’s still a room to clean up the next day.

When your mom wakes you up in the middle of the night and says she’s leaving on the next flight because Grandpa is in the hospital… you still crawl sleepily back into bed.

When your brother leaves and says he’s not coming back… you still have school to do, there’s still a math lesson to be graded.

When your dad tells you Mom was just in a car accident… he still has to go to work and you have to get supper for your little sister.

As a writer it strikes me as strange, how life doesn’t stop because of a tragic event. How the world just keeps on spinning. It almost doesn’t seem fair. Inside you’re different, shaken up and turned inside out… but life just doesn’t let you have a moment to process it. There are no smooth transitions back into daily chores.

But perhaps that fact is a blessing, and something that offers a small bit of hope. The daily chores that keep the hands busy; that give you a purpose when there’s nothing you can do to help the ones you love. And if life outwardly can calm down and go back to normal, it can remind that eventually, although not right away, things inwardly can calm down too.

If life did stop whenever a tragedy struck, we’d never get to the other side of it. But because life does keep going, faithfully moving forward one moment at a time, we find ourselves eventually looking on another dawn, full of hope.