Response to death

"The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic"
-Joseph Stalin

One-hundred-and-sixty-thousand bodies are irrevocably broken every single day, and I am not phased by it, but let die one misfit classmate, who I didn't particularly care for in the first place, and I am suddenly shocked and crippled over the fear of my own mortality and by sentiments of sympathy that I cannot articulate. How can I or we be so unphased by the tragedies of the great many and yet be debilitated with mourning over a single man, simply because we knew his name and can recollect his face and voice? How is that fair? How is that rational? It must be a primal emotional response.

The impact it has had upon me is that of a severe reminder. It's easy to be lulled into thinking of death as patient pursuer, as something lurking in the far distance that, with the right tools and knowledge, might be chased back, temporarily if not indefinitely. Yet happenings like these are frightening because they remind of the frailty of the human body and of how simple, brief or trivial a folly might rend it.

Death needn't wait patiently for me over some distant hill, allotting me the time to gather my weapons against it. It might come for me suddenly and decisively in the night. It might be a lapse in judgment on the interstate, or a careless crossing of the street, or a stray lump of lead shot at me without regard, or a meaningless verbal confrontation, or a prick of the finger, or a wisp of something in the air, an abrupt malfunction in any critical organ. After instances like this, all I see around me are opportunities to die.

That young man and his friend didn't die of old age or because of gradual accumulations of health related defects. They died abruptly and without warning because they stopped to lend aid to a motorist and were struck down by another vehicle. He was alive and well one moment and dead the next. Death didn't wait for him. How do I know how long it will wait for me?

I am so afraid.