Too short.

I'm going to get a little deep here, so please bear with me. In the past 3 weeks, two young lives that were once a part of mine, have been cut short. LeeAnn, a young lady who was a past neighbor, took her own life one night in desperation for her troubles to be over. Troubles that apparently few people knew she had. She was only 30 years old. She had a daughter, a husband, a life and all that changed irrevocably in the blink of an eye. Her parents are crushed, and her daughter and husband are most certainly heartbroken, and there is nothing in the world that can make it better. So much potential...gone forever. And today I learned about Nancy. She was part of a couple with whom my husband and I used to double-date. Yesterday evening, she was walking around the lake with her sister and friends when a car driven by a distracted teenager hit her and she was killed. They were close enough to her home that her husband ran to give her CPR. Only seconds before, her sister was in her place and Nancy asked to switch. The young man who killed her is beyond distraught. He wasn't drinking, wasn't texting, wasn't even on his phone at all. With the blindingly bright rays of the evening sun, he simply couldn't see her. She was a wife, a mother of four, a very good person and now, in an instant, many more lives have been changed in ways nobody would ever wish. One had a choice to end her life, the other didn't, but both left this world so tragically, and left many grieving people behind. I understand that life is unpredictable and I understand that of all the things life can be, one thing its not is fair. But of all the things I've learned about and tried to fathom, sudden death is something I just can't seem to wrap my head around. I believe in an afterlife and I believe there is a loving, beautiful place for the souls of good people when they pass from this life, but I can't come to grips with it when those people leave us much too soon. Nobody knows when it will be our turn to exit this life and if we did, perhaps we'd live our lives differently. If you knew you only had a week or a day left to live and you knew how you'd die, what would you change? How would you make your life and the lives of the people you love, ones to cherish forever? What mark are you leaving on this world so that when your time comes, there will be a positive lasting legacy? Would you be more generous with your time and love? Would you be quicker to accept other people for who they are and not try to mold them into who YOU would have them be? Would you be more ready to forgive truly rather than hold grudges and forgive in word only? The deaths of these two young women have shaken me to my core, and as you can tell, I'm feeling more than a bit melancholy. Life is too short sometimes, and I just don't understand.