The Value of a Life

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I loved the movie - American Beauty - and more for the scene where the bag is floating through the air and the actor says something along the line of life is beautiful and it sometimes threatens his heart to see so much beauty.

I thought of that line a couple of times through the last few days - I kind of thought about it in a backwards way however.

I read about a couple of accidental deaths - one was a beautiful five-year-old boy who fell on one of his toys and pierced his brain. The other was a worker who left behind three kids and a wife. Both accidents filled my heart with grief as I considered the lives touched by these two people.

Some people when they die leave marks on so many others lives.

I read something, somewhere that said a life ends when the work that God has for you has been completed. It's a beautiful, profound thought, but one that does little to comfort those left behind.

Yet when I read the story of a car hitting a tree, or a person losing their life after a long struggle with cancer, I try hard not to dwell on the circumstances of the loss.

Instead, I try to think about those left behind and the love that fills their heart, and the grief that threatens to overwhelm them. It drives me nuts to think that a life can be summed up by the printed words of an obituary or the camera shot of the accident scene.

The bag was just twisting in the wind at the end of American Beauty and yet the scene was lovely and the music was soft, and the complications of life seemed simplified in some way.

Every creation has a purpose - every end of a life somehow signals a new beginning. Human wheels spin around and around.

Just trying not to think of the circumstances of those simple accidents - hopefully the grieving families will one day soon, feel the beauty again.

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