Alexa Babin

A couple days ago, I got news of a tragedy that hit close to home. It was horrific. When I first got the text, I thought I was being punked. It seemed too far-fetched to be real. My coworker from a show I’ve worked on the last couple of seasons sent me a link to a news article. Someone of significant authority from the staff and crew of our show was killed in a double homicide. I felt myself start to quiver from the inside out. How does such a thing happen? How does it happen to someone I know? What do I do with this news?

I couldn’t wrap my brain around it. I still can’t.

All too often we sink into the comfortability of our lives, and we forget about tragedy. We forget that death can and will come at some point or another. We feel insulated from certain pains of the world—especially those which seem far off and dramatic—and yet if we live long enough, or stretch our relationship networks wide enough, we will experience those events too awful to name. Tragedy is a part of life.

I’ve been struggling with where to put this news and feeling within myself. How can my soul grapple with such an act of seemingly random, unwarranted violence? How can my heart not tear down the middle when I think of the kindness of this woman, who I was not particularly close to, but who was a meaningful part of my work life? And how do I comfort those who were close to her, who were on her team, and who shared daily communication with her for years? How can I be a support to them?

The layers and degrees of grief and tragedy will forever be a mystery of the universe, it seems. There is no making sense of that which is the result of mankind’s free will. I will never have all the answers or explanations or reasons for why things happen the way they do. And yet… we all have to exist in the same reality as this tragedy.

So, what do we do? Where do we turn? How do we process that which rips us apart?

When I was in high school, I remember someone (a teacher, perhaps), telling me that Western civilization doesn’t do well at equipping people to deal with suffering. Eastern civilizations have a much more robust cultural framework for how to manage the uncomfortable, and even painful parts of life. People learn how to suffer well. But here in the West, we are often taught to push through, to overcome, to find power over these things. We don’t have the best context for learning how to suffer.

What would it look like to surrender to the suffering that comes with great tragedy? Pretending it doesn’t exist or finding ways to escape reality are only temporary solutions—at some point, we must face the music.

Last night with a couple friends, I was wrestling with what it would mean to surrender to this tidal wave of tragedy. I can’t explain it away. I can’t undo it. I can’t even rationalize how something like this happens. But I can stare down the barrel of it and accept that it’s real. I can accept that I’m feeling strongly about it and not try to push it down or distract and forget. I can lock eyes with this unspeakable event and let it move through me, whatever that looks like.

When tragedy finds us, we must trust that we are not alone. We grip onto it, get angry, get sad, take a walk, cry, sit with our friends, write about it, pray about it, let it invade our thoughts and keep us up at night. It becomes part of who we are. And because tragedy is a given in this life, coming for all of us at some time or another, we know we are innately designed to be swept away by the wave together, hand in hand. Tossed by the water as we may be, we can’t afford to unclasp our hold on each other.

Tragedy will threaten to pull us apart, lost in the darkness of our own individual grief. But ultimately, it is one of the greatest things that unites us.

So, what do we do with it? I don’t know. But I know we do it together.