Unexpected inspirations bring both hope, joy

Today occasional gaps in the clouds reveal pockets of hopeful blue. And who can deny the robin’s song of spring cheer. Exuberance spills forth unashamed. I want to open my hands to catch the joy.

But there’s something else felt along with the gladness. A sorrow for new suffering fallen on others. For the Syrians in the recent poison gas attack. And before that Canada’s Humboldt Broncos junior ice hockey team — on their way to a game when their bus was involved in a tragic collision.

A sub-story of that accident has gripped my thoughts. The entire team had dyed their hair blonde in solidarity — they were near in age, 16-21 — and similar in build. The coroner made a defensible mistake. He confused the identities of two players, Parker and Xavier. Parker’s family was told he was injured. Xavier’s family was told he’d died. In fact, the opposite was true.

Recently I mentioned a memory involving our teen son and his friend and the time my husband and I, following behind, came upon a vehicle very like theirs — on its top — down an embankment in the brush. On the S-curve by the railroad tracks on Alaska’s Parks Highway. You’ll cross there on an overpass now.

In my focus to get to the wreckage I nearly stepped on a young man’s body thrown face up on the ground. A stranger. Some other mother got the heart wrenching white cross news. We drove away that spring evening to find our son waiting at home.

The Humboldt hockey player mix-up isn’t a complete void for me. Anguish and joy traded places in those families. Probably not without some measure of guilt. It’s human to want the sorrow to belong to somebody else.

Xavier’s older brother Isaac — before the identity correction — wrote his sibling, “We had a special bond from the day you were born. My heart is broken that our paths have been separated by this terrible tragedy. I love you so much. I’ll always remember you and who you were will influence me for the rest of my life.”

Isaac’s joy in the return of the brother he thought lost must have sprung all borders. It must have punched through the clouds to fly wildly up there in the big blue. Singing like a sea of robins.

I’m left wondering. Who in my life — unexpectedly regained — would inspire such joy? And do I live so they know it.