Somewhere in San Francisco, a woman tucks her 3 year old into bed hoping that for once, she will sleep soundly through the night.
In New York, a 12 year old boy hits his first home run without his father
In Florida, a prom queen comes home to the kind of silence that rings only after a love is broken.
And in Illinois, a 45 year old woman visiting relatives jumps from a scaffold.
Every person has a story.
So what story or voice told this woman to plummet from a building ?
It’s the same voice that tells you to smoke one more cigarette, and to drink one more beer.
The voice that says “No. You’re just not good enough.”
That voice was the same that drove Van Gogh to a gunshot, and Judy Garland to drugs.
But how far they could have gone.
Who’s to say this woman wasn’t an artist?
Ready to paint her next masterpiece or finish her first film.
Or maybe she was doctor
running from the patients she was unable to save.
Perhaps she was medical engineer, and she was on the verge of curing some incurable disease.
Or maybe she was chemist, or a firefighter, or a lawyer or an architect.
Maybe she was a mother
who fell in love with a man who worked in a hospital.
She called him ‘King’ and He called her ‘Miracle’,
King told her once that her laugh would make the rain disappear
She married him at 22 but had her wedding planned since she was 14.
She lived in a red brick house with a white picket fence and a brown dog named Hershey.
Miracle and King lived for years until the daughter they called ‘Stardust’ moved out of the house and went to Illinois State University to live in Watterson Towers.
Maybe ‘Miracle’ was a construction worker there.
But if she was, she would have known
Scaffolding is meant for support
It is meant to hold things together,
Not to tear them apart.
We will not know her story.
But not knowing is no reason to call her death a selfish distraction, or a joke.
Some demons are fought for years, some for months, some for days.
and sometimes, the demons win.
Maybe ‘King’ was right to name her ‘Miracle’
Maybe ‘Miracle’s choice was to remind us of what it means to be alive.
Maybe ‘King’ named her ‘Miracle’ because he knew that one day, people would look at the great things that he and his love achieved, and have nothing more to say.
Somewhere in San Francisco, a 3 year old sleeps soundly.
In New York, a father holds his son’s hand.
In Florida, a prom queen’s parents kiss in front of their children
And in Illinois, someone learned that life will give you no other choice but to believe in miracles.