Not Getting Over It

Even as I write, Wagner is suffering through one of the worst things that can happen to any close-knit community. A Wagner student named Justin Stevens has died under tragic circumstances and the news has hit everyone hard, even those who knew him only briefly. A popular member of Wagner's junior class, an accomplished theatre major, who also recently served as co-coordinator of new student orientation, he was found dead in the East Bronx earlier this afternoon. You can tell he will be greatly missed

It is always hard to make sense of such tragic occurrences. You can't quite believe something like this can happen and you wonder whether it could have been avoided if he hadn't been alone. But such speculation does little good and the exact circumstances of the event don't matter all that much either. What does matter is that a wonderful human being has been lost to the world and to the Wagner community, and those who knew him well and loved him greatly cannot be consoled. They need to let the full impact of their emotions take hold of them, even if those emotions include despair, rage, and desolation. 

Death is always hard under any circumstances and time for mourning should never be cut short. But when a person in the prime of life who has so many things to live for and to look forward to is cut down, everyone, even those who barely knew him, recognize that this creates a crack in the universe, a hurt, a laceration from which we do not easily heal. There will be time for healing and getting on with our lives. In the meantime, we mourn openly, passionately, unapologetically. We do so because we are human and because we have no other choice. But most of all we do so to remember and to cherish an important person who made a difference and whose loss, for the time being, is unbearable.