Some things just aren’t supposed to happen.

I have the joy of having made a few pretty close friends down here—close, that is, for having known them less than a year and a half.

Anyway, one of them (let’s call him “Chris”) suffered a tragic-beyond-words loss in his family recently. His younger sister (let’s call her “Mary”), days after graduating from college, with a serious boyfriend-future-husband eager to propose in a few months, and plans to start a Ph.D. program in the fall, died in a fatal car accident. A tow truck was speeding and broadsided her car. She died some hours later from brain injuries.

It’s the kind of thing that’s just not supposed to happen. Mary was someone who, by all indications, brought a lot of joy to those around her. Someone about whom you might say, if the world had more people like that, we’d all be better off.

I attended Mary’s funeral today. I never actually met her (was there to support Chris), but the sense of how special a person she was was very palpable. I found myself choked up for a while....which I’m not exactly sure why. Maybe seeing how sad Chris and his girlfriend (who knew Mary) were and feeling powerless to help? Or, maybe reminded subconsciously of my own recent family loss, which was not a tragedy at all but still hard.

Ironically, she had told a friend of hers only weeks ago what music she wanted at her wedding. Those music plans were the basis of the funeral music today. So, this was the first funeral where I ever heard, or sang, Ubi caritas. Or where I sang the Kyrie, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei from the “Jubilate Deo Mass”. (The deceased wanted Gregorian chant at her wedding.....did I mention that the world needs more people like her?)

I wonder, poetically maybe, if the wedding music was appropriate for the funeral, but that she is being married after all, and instead of to a guy who will leave his socks out and forget to take the garbage out, to the best Groom a girl could ever find.

Requiescat in pace.