Across the region Saturday and on TV on Saturday night, people were trying to find something good in the discovery of the body of Dru Sjodin. You heard the lines and maybe spoke a few of them yourself: At least now the family knows. At least now they're not left wondering any more. At least now people can find closure.
Those views are perfectly understandable. Americans are an upbeat people, and we yearn to find the silver lining in every cloud.
But sometimes there is no silver lining. Sometimes there's only cloud. And Dru Sjodin's death feels like one of those times.
A kind and promising young woman was taken from the prime of life and, an autopsy likely will show, murdered. There's no "up" side to that fact. Yes, the community came through heroically to search, and to support the family; yes, police and other authorities performed with competence and great sensitivity in a case that drew worldwide attention.
But those items simply are civilization's honest efforts to reaffirm goodness after an incident of matchless evil. They do reaffirm that goodness, and they deeply reassure us all that legitimate authorities still are in control.
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But they don't make the evil any less evil, or stark or brutal or hard. And in these early hours after the discovery of Dru's body, that fist-clenching realization seems to overwhelm all else.
Dru's now-confirmed death brings us face to face with a sobering fact, one most of us spend our lifetimes trying to escape from or deny: Sometimes, very bad things happen and for no good reason at all. In this case, the tragedy is even more wrenching, if anything, because of the likely involvement of the hand of another. So not only do bad things happen, but human beings can be the very architects of that gloom.
Grief, laced with anger and spiked with helplessness and despair...A dark theme today?
Yes, to describe a series of dark events. The cloud will lift in time - though for Dru's family, it'll never drift completely out of sight. The sun will rise and people will love, laugh and feel safe.In time. But not right now.
Right now there's only grief; a flood of sympathy for the family; a grim determination to see justice done; and an urge, as Dylan Thomas put it, to "rage, rage against the dying of the light."
