I can't even think of a title.

Perhaps you have read about the horrible car accident in Onancock on Friday night which took the lives of four young men and a two-year-old boy, and injured two others. I was surprised to find that word of it was on the AP wires.

The sadness of it only just caught up with me today, partly because I didn't sleep well which makes me overly emotional, partly because it is a dark, rainy, gloomy day, but also because I stepped out of the cocoon of home to go to work. That put me in contact with the outside world, and under the same shroud that seems to be hanging invisibly around us. You go out and you cannot help but come into contact with it, either from snatches of conversation caught in the bakery or grocery store, seeing it on the news or discussing it in office conversation. It's everywhere. And even though I did not personally know, or even ever meet, anyone who was involved in the accident, because it is the Shore, it is personal.

Even though the Eastern Shore consists of two counties--Accomack and Northampton--we consider it one community. It really does feel like one small town. I like to joke that it is not six degrees of separation around here, it's more like two degrees. When I was a teenager I found this painfully confining. Now, after living in a few mid-sized cities, I find it very comforting.

Through those two degrees, I am connected to four of the people in that accident. The woman and toddler are the daughter and grandson of an acquaintance. One of the boys was the son of my sister-in-law's pastor, whom I have met a few times. And another was the grandson of the woman who went to our church and lived 3 blocks away from me when I was a child. From the time I was born until I was 15, I went to her house with my mom to get our hair done, and her late husband used to pump our gas and fix the family cars at his service station in downtown Parksley.

I do not wish to be caught up in the tragedy of it, but it is difficult to stop thinking about it. Even if I don't personnally mourn one of the boys or the young child, I can't help mourning the loss of life itself. Mostly I am mourning with the parents and grandparents and family, because that's where my connection lies. I can only remotely imagine what they must be thinking and feeling and I am having a hard time getting it out of my head. Because I have real faces to go with those feelings--those people fit somewhere in a place in my life--and I am so very sorry for them.