Did You Read This?

Last night my Brit friend told me about a shooting at a local school in southern Finland. Here's the complete story:

Man Kills Eight at Finnish School

The world has gone mad. I never understood people who do such a thing. I think the boy who started the shooting was a bit crazy or something.

It reminds me that there's no such a thing as a safe place on earth. Something can happen in the most unlikely place. You can be there at the wrong time and place. A month or so after I moved to Finland, I heard about a robbery at a jewellery store in Bandung. A couple of people were shot to death. There were a couple who wanted to buy wedding rings from the store, and if I'm not mistaken it was the guy who got killed then and there. What are the odds?

Is there any "random death"? I don't think so. When God decides to take someone home, then that person WILL be there. When God decides that someone has to live still, no matter how bad the accident or experience that person has gone through, he/she will still survive. But what about those people who commit suicide? Hmmm...I think they may be exceptions to God's decisions 'coz there's NO WAY God would lead them to kill themselves.

Now I'm rambling. This topic reminds me of an unexpected accident happening years and years back. I was around 14-15 years old back then and one night after midnight (yeah, I was a bat, I LOVED watching TV until late at night), my cousin called me and from his tone of voice, I knew right away that something was wrong. He was usually so funny and jolly, but that night his voice sounded so grave and serious. He told me to wake my Dad up and when my Dad picked up the phone, he YELLED, "WHAAATTTTT?" and wailed so loudly and cried right away. I was SO shocked. It was one of those few times when I heard my own Dad cry in front of my eyes.

The next thing I knew, my cousin was going to pick my Dad up, so I wanted to go there. We went to the hospital and turned out that my other cousin had died due to an accident. My Dad went into the morgue but he wouldn't let me in. Some other relatives were there and I saw one guy who came out of the morgue right away and then threw up on the ground.

My cousin's eldest brother was also there with his girlfriend. She was hugging him as he was crying. He said that he was sorry that he hadn't met his youngest brother this morning. They didn't have a chance to say anything to each other as he had left earlier.

I could hear my aunt (Dad's younger sister) screaming and wailing and crying from inside the morgue. She couldn't believe what had happened. She had lost his husband due to a disease a couple of years back, and now she lost her youngest son. My cousin was almost 21 years old back then. He was one of the handsomest of all grandkids. He loved playing the guitar and he was pretty good at it. That night he went to his girlfriend's place and then he "raced home" on his motorcycle when he realized it was getting late. He didn't want to make his mother worried as she didn't want him to come home later than an expected time. Apparently as he was speeding home, there was a big bump on one of the streets near the hospital, so his motorcycle flipped a few times and he hit his head and died right away. Everybody said that everything was intact except a small cut on his ear and blood coming out of one ear.

I remember seeing him in his coffin. He looked as handsome as always, as though nothing bad had happened to him. I could hear my aunt crying non-stop. She refused to eat. She cried days on end. I felt SO bad for her. She said that her son had been so good to her. She said that not long before the accident, they had celebrated her birthday. He bought her a cake or something. She said that in a few days it would be his birthday, but he couldn't celebrate it anymore. Gladly now it's all in the past and that my aunt's okay. :-))))

I remember dreaming about that cousin of mine months or years afterward. He was visiting my parents' house and he looked exactly like the last time I had met him. :-))))