In sympathy with the families
Hearts across Grand Forks broke over the weekend with the news that two young people had been killed in a car accident in the city.
The crash -- the first fatal car accident in Grand Forks in years, a police officer thought -- claimed the lives of James Freestone, 21, and Tasha Brenno, 19.
Friends who knew them gathered within hours at the site of the accident, mourning Freestone and Brenno's passing.
Now that circle of friends has been expanded by many thousands as residents grieve with the young adults' families.
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Tragedy strikes all of us sooner or later, but the death of a young person is a sledgehammer blow. For with that death, a little bit of every family member and friend dies, too. Those "deaths" in turn are sensed and mourned by more distant friends and relatives who may never even have met the beloved.
In this way, the impact of a sudden and unexpected death ripples outward and touches so many people. And when news coverage of the death is involved, the ripples spread farther and touch so many more.
This will be small consolation to the family members, for nothing will erase their grief. But perhaps it will be a comfort to know that as happens when a stone is tossed into a lake, the ripples that have spread across a wide area now are rebounding back toward them.
For every person who has read or heard about this accident -- every person whom the waves have touched -- now is sending prayers and sympathy in the families' direction. And by "every person," we mean a population numbering not just in the hundreds or even thousands, but tens of thousands.
Our hearts are with the families of James Freestone and Tasha Brenno. We are all in this together, never more so than when young people in the community die suddenly and families are left bereft. The news of such deaths resonates in a special way and saddens people from near and far.
And if there were some way to accommodate all of the many people who now share the families' grief, no church in town would do. Only a space as big as the Alerus Center would suffice.
-- Tom Dennis for the Herald
