Second-hand Grief

This morning, I cried for people I have never known. I was on my way to work, a normal day in every sense, until this song came on air, tears in heaven. I was listening and singing along, when I remembered the story behind the song. The one about the little boy who fell out of a fifty third story window. It is the saddest thing in the world, to have a three-foot-sized hole in one’s life, to be left with the memories of a life so short. I remembered all the parents I had heard of, who lost their children this way. I don’t know any of them personally. Some of them are friends of my parents, some of them acquaintances of neighbors, but their grief came to me fresh and warm, like the feel of falling tears. I tasted the second-hand grief, almost a whirlpool that sucked me in, churning me inside its vortex. I climbed out slowly, wiping my eyes, knowing well that I couldn’t have felt enough.