MAY 27
I wouldn’t mind dying young...I’ve had a full life already.
—MARY HICKMANWe who have lost loved ones through sudden accidents find
ourselves scouring our memories for portents. Were there
any clues, any indicators, that something terrible like this
might happen? If we can find them, perhaps they inject a
measure of meaning into a life thrown into chaos. On some
subconscious level did our loved one know?
My daughter made that statement, casually, during the
months preceding her sudden death at sixteen in a horse-
back-riding accident. “Mary!” I said. “One world at a time.”
After she died I remembered her words. Had she known
better than I? And what is going on, that it may be possible
to have some vague foreknowledge of an event like that?
If that is possible, what other unfathomable mysteries
exist in a universe of which we may know only the smallest
fragment?
These “signs and wonders” do not mitigate the sorrow of
loss, but they may give us hope that on some level a Tran-
scendant Scheme is at work and knows what it’s doing.
I will keep my mind open to all possibilities of knowledge and faith.