Life Examined

By Erin in News on Nov 21, 2005 4:51PM

It's easy for those unaffected by certain tragedies to carry on blithely as though nothing traumatic ever took place. We hear the news. We process it. But then we pick up and go about our days. It's how life works, after all, and if we processed all of the world's hurt there would be nothing left of us. We return to all of the mundane facets about our lives that have gone relatively unchanged, no matter how deeply we felt for those who were hurt.

Perhaps we give pause to how those people might be holding up, but it's usually when one of the local TV stations dredges up their names and reminds us again of what happened.

So it's humbling and painful and altogether too real to have read the brilliantly written, beautiful and, most importantly, human piece on Judge Joan Lefkow in Sunday's Chicago Tribune. Chicagoist tips its hat to Mary Schmich for this strong, rare glimpse at how those who are most affected by the most gruesome and life-shattering of crimes are going about to try and pick up the pieces and accomplish those mundane tasks of living that we take for granted.

The Lefkow Murders rocked the nation and for good reason. But we can talk for days on end as to what this crime meant to us as a society, about our judicial system, about we as citizens of Chicago, and on and on. What we soon forget amidst the posturing and sensationalism is that there is a family of real people who lost two people they love. Their lives will never, ever be the same.