Why?

There are quite a lot of articles in the news today about the young man who interrupted a midnight screening of the latest Batman movie to shot as many people as he could.  There are stories of young people (and all but two of the victims were under 30) diving under chairs and being sheltered by friends who were then shot, and the six year old victim attending the movie as a special ‘treat’ and the 27 year old victim celebrating his birthday.  It’s so sad and so meaningless.  The scary thing is that they were doing something Sam, my daughter, had just done.  Even she commented on the parallels. 

Now as I’m writing this, I’m wondering how I can possibly be grateful for anything connected to this event.  So I’m not going to try.  It is so horrible to accept that there are human beings who are prepared to behave in such a way.  There are big questions: “Why”?

So instead I’ll be grateful for something that occurred over 65 years ago, and something the victims of the above may not get – closure!  I’m been doing some work on my family history ‘project’ and was re-reading some papers from Ian’s Grandfather, Albert Charles Joyce.  Eric Joyce, Ian’s uncle and Albert’s son, was a casualty of WWII, one of the hundreds of thousands of men who died as part of Bomber Command.   Albert was sent to London towards the end of the war for his work and he asked if he could meet the sole survivor of the crew of which his son was part of.  This man’s name was William King, and he was a Scot.  The RAF asked (ordered!) him to come to London to meet with Albert and discuss the events of the night.  Albert and William talked one afternoon.  Albert took very detailed notes on what had happened, which he kept and I now have.  As a result of this conversation, the Joyce family received closure on the death of their son.  The story itself is amazing; the fact that someone survived to retell that story is miraculous!  It didn’t make his death easier to accept, but there was an understanding that most families would not have got!

I suspect our desire to understand events or make sense of things is innate…