Ripples

My own granddaughter is nine.

Just a month ago I was thinking how nice it would be if she could come to summer camp on the Guadalupe River. I wasn’t thinking of Mystic, but of nearby Camp Waldemar where I had spent six weeks every summer for five years, beginning when I was twelve. Those sojourns had great importance to me. But then, on July 4, the river rose and everything changed.

All over Texas, in Bellville, Dallas, Beaumont, Houston, San Antonio and so many other places, rural and urban, the ripples of unthinkable loss and sorrow spread.

The disaster brought strangers and friends alike together in a commonality of grief that sweeps away every difference and division.

The shining faces of those lost little girls pierce our hearts, and mine in an oddly personal way I have been trying to understand more fully.

Part of the reason may be that many families of those absent children inhabit what my son calls “our cohort.” They are in age and background the families of my son’s Houston friends, of my own schoolmates at Kinkaid.

They include people who have made choices similar to ones I made long ago about where to live, where to educate my child. Choices that clustered around the ideas of safety and a secure future.

I imagine many of the bereaved parents longed with a particular intensity like we did for their children’s safety in a society they keep hearing is otherwise sin-ridden and dangerous to them.

Surely the history and substantial cost of Camp Mystic would ensure that safety for four happy weeks.

We see now that the illusion of security does have a price tag, but it’s only blank paper when flood waters rise.

How will those parents, those families, ever feel safe again? For years now Mystic has been an actively Christian camp, and scripture is read in circumstances where, at Waldemar, my counsellor read J.D. Salinger to us after lights went out.

I pray the strong religious faith that bound these young campers will bring their families strength. But even with that bulwark, it won’t be easy.

The nature of grief, at least in the short term, can be doubt. Questions: Is the agent of our sorrow the Deity some call Our Lord, to whom the devout sing and pray every day?

Is it nature whose power authorities will strive even further to thwart and contain?

Is it merely human error? Asking feels wrong to many people. “Don’t politicize this tragedy!” said a Facebook friend. I had fallen into the discussion when I shared an opinion piece from the San Antonio Express-News that asked questions.

And while it’s true that questions can bear political intent, I posted that article because I react to unimaginable loss by looking for reasons. It’s a way to limit raw emotions that can sink me.

The fact is, as a species, human beings have to ask. We always ask. We are wired for asking. It’s the engine of the things we do and build, moral judgment aside.

That’s why inquiries will proceed. Blame will be assessed, even when blame is quite beside the point.

Meanwhile, recovery continues. A grim and costly responsibility has been undertaken with empathy and courage by government and volunteers alike.

This is the power of community at work, in shared understanding of this tragedy as a uniquely human loss, human sorrow.

Already residents of our area have sent food and supplies. Monetary donations will be needed for a long time to come, as well as our continuing love and care, for those who have lost so much.