Happy New Years!!

Although I'm looking forward to a fresh new year, I'm not very pleased with how the old one ended. A cataclysmic tidal wave killing hundreds of thousands of people is not anyone's idea of a happy time. It is truly unimaginable how many people have died and the extent of the devastation in those countries.

Death statistics are always hard for me to imagine, even if it's five or ten people. To help myself better grip the implications of statistics I figure that for every one person dead at least five other living people (parents, friends, siblings) are severely affected by their passing. If five people die, the course of 25 people's lives are changed forever. If ten people die then 50 people are devastated. In the past this system has helped me feel statistics instead of nonchalantly saying, "Isn't that terrible," and carrying on with my life.

But something different happens when 150,000 people die. Based on my little equation there should be 750,000 more people mourning for the dead. But what happens when entire families or communities die? Is there anyone left to mourn? Perhaps when this many people die it works backwards. For every five people dead, there's only one person left to mourn their passing.

In a weird, maybe sick way, my equation still helps me to feel the tragedy. So many people from one family or community have died that hardly anyone is left to deal with the reality that they have to live life without their families and friends. That is truly a gut-wrenching and horrifying thing to imagine.