It happens every year and this time I’m just tired of it.  Tragedy after tragedy. Someone dies. Someone is found dead. Someone is hurt, treated unfairly, almost killed, a victim of malpractice, mistreatment. 
At the end of the year (as every year), there is the perfunctory list of “celebrity” deaths throughout the previous year. 2007 was dominated by Anna Nicole Smith. Who would get the body, who would get the baby, who would really cared? She was drugged out, overpaid, untalented (or at least no talents that a lady would want known). Her claim to fame was bilking a man 200 years her senior with his wheelchair and oxygen tank already in his masoleum  out of his money and was surprised when his family fought her about it.  Okay that part was funny, because I honestly think she was surprised.

In 2007, 117 brave men and women made the ultimate sacrifice for oil reserves –oh I’m sorry— for Enduring Freedom.  117 Fathers, sons , mothers, daughters, sisters, cousins, neices, nephews. AMERICANS fighting because our president told them that they had to do it.

2008, started off with Heath Ledger overdosing on his medications for a cold.  He left a daughter and an ex who still loved him or something or other.  It’s not a tragedy. It’s called read the label on the bottles and don’t mix your meds and drink or whatever.  Then they tried to make it interesting because somebody called one of the anorexic Olsens before the  police were called. 

In 2008,  we sacrificed another 155 men and women for this senseless war that I am still trying to understand.  They are far more important lives lost to me than a handful of actors and singers , producers, directors and entertainers.  The only exception for me was Tim Russert.  He had something closer to a purpose. He made attempts to bring the truth.

There are children who have lost parents wrongly killed on the city streets of Anytown USA.  The stress of not being able to care for ones family has taken its toll and many don’t know how to handle that and the words bullet and brain take on meaning for them.  There are sick, stupid cyberbullies who have no real accountabilty and drive already fragile-minded, possible overly coddled children to take their own lives.   Where is the outrage?  Where is the sickness in our hearts for these heinous crimes of humanity? 

If  the passing of Eartha Kitt was a sad momemt where her photo needed to be plastered on television and in newspapers, why wasn’t my mother’s there as well? What about my grandmother? What about Louise Gomez?  What about the faces and names and lives of the thousands of United States Armed Service members who have made the ultimate sacrifice?  Will we ever know the true numbers? Or will these past eight years become out generations Viet Nam?   Even the survivors of the “wars” have come back tainted, harmed, disillusioned.  There are soldiers who would rather commit suicide than return. What about the Stop-Loss?

All life is sacred. Not just those who made it to television or the big screen. Or who play a sport a tad better than someone else. When someone dies, there is a piece of unbalance in the universe. Somewhere and angel cries.  Death is no discriminator of  status, and yet we are. 

If we no longer treat the dead with dignity, what hope is there for the living?  Society is constantlybasing our worth on things, hedonistic pleasures, replaceables, money.   I am here to tell you that just because I don’t have a dime to my name, I am certainly worth more to many more people than Anna Nichole.  How many food pantries did she serve at? When did she take off her coat and give it to someone who obviously needed one?  When did she feed the hungry, offer a ride to someone, help someone with her last on the hope that God would provide for her as well?  I will be remembered for being loving, kind, a friend, a mate, a wife, a confidante.  I will be remembered as a grandmother who baked cookies, who sewed, who crocheted.  I pray that I will be remembered for trying to live a decent and moral and upright life.  That’s far more important than how many movies I made or albums I sold.  

Society may try to make the distinction between us, but  all life has meaning to God.  What does yours mean to the ONE where it really matters?