Life has its tragedies.  For some they come all too often.  Others seem to live blessed lives, but for all of us, they come.

They’re never any fun, but they do have a purpose in this life on Planet Earth.  They teach us.  They teach us the yin to the yang, the dark to the light, and from this teaching we learn how polar opposites or seemingly contrary forces are interconnected and interdependent in the natural world, and how they give rise to each other in turn.

Without tragedy many of us do not appreciate the sunlight.  How often do we hear someone who faced a near death experience and survived say, “I never appreciated my life the way I do now.”

Living through tragedies is often a rehearsal in survival techniques.  Through it we learn how to cope, how to begin breathing again when the breath is knocked from us.

It’s a part of life and it builds muscle.

Tragedies come in all shapes and colors.  Sometimes we see them coming.  Sometimes we don’t.  The unexpected ones are often the toughest.  For me, when Mindy died, I sat in a chair for four hours and looked at the wall in the darkness unable to comprehend.  I was shocked into a kind of coma.  Here yesterday; gone today.

Tragedies stay planted in memory.  They are simply unforgettable.  Where were you when Pearl Harbor was attacked?  What were you doing when JFK was assassinated, when your father died, when you caught your husband cheating?  In a way, we remember them more vividly than the triumphs.  They are simply a huge part of the fabric of our lives.

They inspire us to survive.

And so we, the playwrights, the novelists, the songwriters, throw our stories up on our blackboards and study them for their powerful drama.  We investigate the tragic flaws, the character development and the survival techniques of those who make it through.  The meticulous investigations of these life moments is never fun, but it is necessary in the building of resilience.

The inspiration lies in the recoil of those left and still standing.

 A Pile Of Tears

Music and Lyrics by Peter Link
Title by Jenny Burton

There’s a pile of tears
Sitting on the pillow
Next to where I sleep
A pile of tears

A pile of tears
On cool clean sheets
Who belongs …
I can’t remember
Who belongs …

Were they yours?
Are they mine?
A love, I fear
In sad decline
With nothing left
But a pile of tears

This morning as I lie here waking
Trying to disentangle while my heart is aching
Tryin’ to grasp the fact
That only half the bed needs making

There’s an empty space
There inside the closet
There across the room
An empty space

And an empty place
Inside my life
How do I go on?
I can’t remember
All your things are gone

Not a word
Not a trace
You disappear
But can’t erase
The one thing you left
This pile of tears

This morning as I lie here breaking
Trying to comprehend the turn my life is taking
Tryin’ to grasp the fact
That only half the bed needs making

And tryin’ to make some sense of
This pile of tears
This pile of tears