Last week I went to a funeral for a 9 year old boy.  I work with his mother.  He tragically died from appendicitis.  He was asymptomatic.  He had gone home from school complaining of an upset stomach and nausea.  Two other 9 year olds had also gone home from his school with stomach bug type of symptoms.  Mom tries to get son to bed, tries to get him asleep.  The boy becomes unresponsive, and dies a short time later in the hospital.  I find myself coming back to these facts at the oddest times of the day.  I can only uncomfortably think of the anguish the mother and father are experiencing.  How does one not blame themselves, as a parent, for failing this child?  As a parent is the crucial part…. because as an observer, I can objectively dissect the facts as I know them…. I can reason and move onto something else.  I can safely say I would have done nothing different that those parents…. safely say.  I can scour the web and find many similar stories and realize that even in 2012, this is not as uncommon as you might first think…. that appendicitis can be maddeningly impossible to diagnose.  But as a parent I would or could not absent myself from that horrible blame…. that somehow I should have known what was occurring within the flesh of my flesh…..  how does one find their way back from that?  There is a way, I know there must be.   I know we, in this country, will not accept “randomness” in the death of a child.  We do not have random deaths of children and will not accept such a thing.  So what do we do when a child dies from something that there is no answer to?  The priest at the funeral told us to “go to the light.”  To seek the light of God…. The light of God is comforting the child, and will comfort us… That the child is bathed, now, in the light, and is with our heavenly father, and we should be comforted.  I find no comfort in the priests words…. I find more solace in the randomness of nature…. That boy is not comforted by the light, That boy had a goddamn soccer game this weekend.  That boy will have reminder “notices” for the dentists and well-visits coming for the next year, each little postcard another reminder that “the light” is bullshit, where a 9 year old is concerned.  Rather someone in church tell us that the boy had a good mom, and a good father right here…. that maybe he is in heaven, but he is not comforted to be there…. maybe he might tell his good mom and his good father here on earth that he’ll be ok, because they were such good parents, that he’ll see them someday, but to know that he is ok, that he was not in pain, that he knows that his mom and his dad, right here, did everything they could, and he doesn’t want to see his mom and his dad cry anymore… that he knows that his mom and his dad did not fail him….   maybe for me, that would have been better…. but i can safely say that from the congregation…. safely.