A fourteen year old girl died while attending a concert at which she was taking heavy doses of Ecstacy.  They coroner’s report indicated that her heart rate was more than double the normal rate.  I didn’t know the girl, nor did I attend her funeral, but I am certain her mother wailed that same horrific wail I’ve heard from several mothers who have the pain-filled, severe misfortune of having to bury their children.  More often than not, those children have died needless and suffering-loaded deaths that could have been avoided.

The Mother’s Wail begins in the fiery pit of Hell and gathers its strength along its climb from all those souls who are trapped in Depression and Addiction and loneliness and sadness until it escapes the mouth of a mother who would gladly and readily trade places with her deceased child.  That mother’s wail haunts me; there are times when I’m doing nothing but trying to listen to the still wind when that wail will penetrate the calm and send me into my own state of quiet rage.  Not only does that wail carry the sound of Hell in its vibrations, but it also carries questions for which there are no earthly answers: Why did he or she die? Did he or she feel any pain? Why couldn’t it have been me? Why couldn’t I stop their death from happening?  The questions have no answers, but they are real and cruel demons that shatter any hope to have a life without pain.  In my experience, when someone dies a sudden and tragic death, the pain lasts forever.  People can overcome the pain and learn to manage it, but every smile from the point of the death comes with a nagging guilt and yet another question: Why do I think I have the right to be happy?

I don’t know why that young girl died.  It’s not my place to know.  And while it is everyone’s destiny to die; to me, it only matters how we all choose to live.   We can choose to be healthy: Physically, emotionally, and spiritually.  Or we can choose paths in our lives that lead to suffering and Hell-based pain.  Either way, it’s a choice.  We owe the young lessons learned about these choices.  Even if we don’t see that our lives are a series of choices with consequences, it doesn’t diminish the fact that we all have the power to make our lives as healthy as we possibly can.

Everyone has their path; I’ve said it before and by the time I leave this planet, I will probably have said a whole bunch more.  Still, those paths are ours to choose.  Whichever direction we go, our choices are tied to others.  We can send ripples of health or we can send ripples of suffering out into the world.  Those chosen paths of ours are not isolated to just ourselves; we are all tied to one another regardless of beliefs or ethnicity or sexual orientation or whatever else we want to judge.  I wish that fourteen year old girl wouldn’t have died after taking ecstasy.    And I wish that the Mother’s Wail wasn’t a reality in this world.  I hope that we can figure out a way to have less Mother’s Wail.  By my wishing and hoping ain’t gonna amount to a crappy pile of beans if we all don’t begin to see that each of us has three responsibilities: One to Our Creator (whatever we call Him or Her); One to ourselves; and one to each other.  I didn’t know that fourteen year old girl, but I am saddened that we lost the potential to see her star shine.  And her own Mother’s Wail will haunt me, as it joins a collective wail that seems to be getting louder.