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In those first awful days, weeks and months, I kept lamenting, mostly to Debra – my bff and confidant of all things – that this just wasn’t fair. Intellectually I knew life isn’t fair. We all do. But at the same time, I naively believed that if I followed the rules, did the “right things”, lived the Golden Rule, was a good person, things would work out well. I truly believed “what goes around comes around” and for the most part, I had done my part well. So how did I find myself in this situation that was so blatantly unfair?

There were gangbangers walking the streets wreaking havoc on society while my precious boy, the one who spread fun and joy wherever he went, was dead.

Almost daily I read in the paper of lousy parents who neglected or abused their children yet they still had their children and I had lost mine.

The world was full of sinful people who committed every crime known to man and yet they were allowed to keep their children while I was a rule follower, a contributor to society and God had taken my child whom I loved more than life itself.

Not only had we raised our own two children with all the love, care and nurturing possible but we had taken in two other boys who needed a home during their high school years.

I tried to reconcile something that made no sense. Was I being punished for something I had done that was so obscene in God’s eyes that He would take my child? I was looking for logic in an illogical situation.

Finally one day after hearing my unfairness tirade for the umpteenth time, Debra put the “fairness” issue in context. She explained that no, this wasn’t fair. We didn’t deserve such a horrendous tragedy and she couldn’t explain why bad things happen to good people but they do. Then she observed that I am a person who values fairness more than the average person. She said “Lynn, one of the common refrains from people who have worked for you is that they respected how fairly you treated them.” So here I was dealing with something terribly unfair and I couldn’t do anything to fix it.

I am no longer naïve. I know horrible things happen to good people every day. I know we don’t always get what we deserve. I know life is tenuous and fragile. I no longer believe ‘what goes around comes around” or that “time heals all wounds and wounds all heals”.

I am much more aware of suffering. It’s everywhere. As I’ve said often, it comes in all shapes, sizes, colors & intensities but few of us get through this life without suffering of some kind. My own suffering has changed me. I’m no longer the person I was before Ryan’s death. My suffering has sanded away all the protective veneer and I am unvarnished and as real as is humanly possible.