#37 God Must Be Mad!

At my brother’s funeral, I sit frozen to a chair. But as they are lowering the casket lid, in my mind, I am streaking across the room to get inside before it is closed. “Please don’t shut him up in there all by himself. Please, I can’t stay out here alone."
I am terrified for him and for me.
Within a month, my father was diagnosed with lung cancer and, in our collective numbness, we watch helplessly when he dies 4 months later.
In some bizarre cosmic cruelness my sister’s baby, born one month after my brother’s death and named for him, dies in his sleep one month after my father’s death.
God must be truly mad! I thought.
My sisters, my mother and I retreat farther into our family tradition of silence and isolation. Our only connection to one another is our connection to this trinity of bereavement.
We are lost to one another.
I am very alone. Decades pass. I am still alone.