Loving and Losing

They say that bad things,happen in three's. I'm not sure of the accuracy of this, but have been left to wonder lately.
So in telling this story, I will have to admit to the fact that I am maybe a bit of a lurk on facebook...
Of course, I am only lurking friends that have by the mere virtue of having granted me "friend" status allowed this to happen. But still, I feel a little "over exposed" telling you in black and white, that really, I am a bit of a voyeur. So, all you "friends" out there, be on your guard. Now, back to the bad things happening in three's... Does it count if the three bad things are totally unrelated? What I mean is that in the recent week, I have seen on two of my "friends" facebook pages that they'd recently lost someone. In both cases it seemed to be a relatively young person and certainly someone that was well loved and would be tremendously missed. As I read some of the stories written about these individuals and as I was drawn into their lives, reveling in the stories of fun, mischief, love and loss, I felt a little uncomfortable leaning so far into this stranger's life. But in reading about each loss, I felt like I too would have been friends with this person and felt a certain loss in knowing that wasn't possible. But what I really recognized in each loss was that the person that had left this earth was loved by so many. In some cases it was by school mates that they had not spoken to in 20 years and in others', people would say, "I just ran into to him last week, I wish I had taken more time". Often you will hear people say that there is a silver lining in everything and that this is especially true in times of loss. Or, how about, "everything happens for a reason". During the time of loss, it is difficult to correlate the actual loss to a silver lining and certainly hard to understand the "reason" we have lost someone we love. Late this afternoon I received a call that someone who is very dear to me tragically lost a parent. There was no silver lining, no reason, it just happened. Earlier this week the losses I read about happened to somebody else and while I felt the pain in each writers post, it was nothing compared to the sadness I feel for my friend. And while I didn't know my friends' parent well, I, too, have been locked in the agony of loss and understand all too well the cloak of darkness it brings. Tonight I will say my prayers and my list of intentions will be a little longer.