Stunned

I have spent the last couple of days stunned. I learned early Sunday afternoon about a tragedy that had befallen a couple I've known about ten years. To say we were friends would be to stretch the truth a little. As I've said, I've known them for ten years, but I only saw them once each year for a single weekend. Still, in all that time I had nothing but good thoughts about each of them.

Then I learned that early Saturday morning, after a domestic dispute, the husband shot and killed the wife. I went online and there, on four different news websites, was the shirtless mugshot of the husband, his eyes filled with deadness and despair. I assume that he was shirtless because the arresting police officers took his blood spattered shirt for evidence.

The articles online were all brief. They didn't say a whole lot more than what I've written above. But I was struck by the "comments" that were left on the site by website visitors. A few of the comments were from people who knew the couple personally, and apparently for the people who knew them well, this murder was NOT a surprise. The husband, apparently, never left the house without a gun on him somewhere, and apparently his past actions towards his wife predicted this event.

Well, as I said above, I didn't know them well, and I WAS surprised, and I was left with a sense of sadness, and a little bit of fear. If he'd been carrying a gun on him everywhere he went for years, that meant that he was carrying a gun during the weekends I'd been around him. He'd been around me, my wife, and even some years my kids, all the while carrying a gun. And who else in my life was not who they seemed to be? Who else was carrying a gun around? It's made me question all of the casual friendships I have. How much do I really know these people I see only once or twice a year? Am I really friends with all of these "friends" I have on Facebook? Can I really trust anyone anymore?

As I read through the comments on those websites, though, the vast majority of them were from people who did NOT know the couple, and the callousness of these people was striking. "That'll teach her not to burn the bacon," one person commented. How could that person write that? I understand he was trying to make a joke, but I knew this woman. She was soft-spoken and kind, and she had a sweet smile and a sweet disposition. She didn't deserve this.

"Hope he fries!" was a comment--or something like that--that many people wrote. But I'd known this man, shook his hands several times before, and laughed with him a couple of times on occasion. He wasn't a monster. But he's going to be in prison for the rest of his life. I'll never see him again.

I don't know what to say about all of this. I don't have some adage in my head. This is just where I am today. Stunned. Saddened.

And glad this morning that I am alive and not in prison.