I was in Publix this evening. I ran in to two sets of friends that I haven’t seen since Christopher’s death. The first two, a mother and grown daughter, were so sweet. Denise, the daughter, just before we parted told me how sad she was for my loss. When I saw her mom, Linda, she just had that look in her eyes that communicated her pain on my behalf. These are both people who just knew Christopher in passing from years ago when we all went to the same church.

The other friends are the parents of an only son who played baseball on the same team back when the boys were in 3rd or 4th grade. We exchanged pleasantries and I asked about Kevin. I was excited for them to hear that he was a freshman at UCF as an aspiring engineer. They asked nothing about Christopher so I am certain that they knew of his death and, yet, they said absolutely nothing about it.

I wasn’t upset about either encounter; I was just struck by the contrast. I am not sure that I would have noticed either extreme had it not been for the two different types of encounters within minutes.

A friend recently told me that she thought that people’s reactions often reflect their need to believe that this could never happen to them. I guess I saw that with Kevin’s parents.

I’d never want to think that this could happen to Christopher . . . even though it did.