When Life Has No Answers

Feb 3, 2011 by winjaw

Over the last 48 hours, my e-mail inbox has overflowed. The names flying about in the “reply to all” bring back memories of 30 years ago.

E-mails you get from those whom you haven’t heard from in years. The kind signifying a big event, like a wedding. Or a funeral.

At first, they didn’t make sense. I immediately recognized the last name of the subject in question, a fraternity brother. But I did not recognize the two first names – that of a male and a female. I began to think it was his “official” name or something.  And I got sick to my stomach thinking my fraternity brother and his wife were killed in some accident.

And then I searched the internet and was slammed with story after story after story. It just never registered with me. I knew the story, everyone has heard at least something about it. It’s national news, in fact international, as I read one version in a big London newspaper.

My fraternity brother was alive. The first names were those of his 16-year-old daughter, Calyx, and 13-year-old son, Beau.

They were shot and killed by their mother, my fraternity brother’s wife.  

Newspaper reports say Beau was shot by his mother, Julie Schenecker, while she was taking him to soccer practice. She returned home and shot Calyx, who was working on a computer. A police officer was quoted as saying “it appeared as if the children never saw it coming.”

I nearly threw up. And I said several things I just don’t say. And then I cried. I cried for Parker, my fraternity brother. And like everyone else, I asked “why?”

Col. Parker Schenecker was overseas in Qatar serving his country when he received the news. He returned home earlier this week. And no, the irony is not lost on me; that usually soldiers appear at the front door of some suburban home with the horrible news, not the other way around.

Parker, I am so, so sorry.

Memories flood back at times like this. Memories of a time more than 30 years ago when I was a fraternity pledge. Parker was a sophomore. I was standing next to a keg, probably too long. I remember I was sick of being a pledge, sick of all the crap that goes along with it. I was done.

Parker was standing beside me, and I gave him my pledge pin and told him I was quitting, accompanied by some rather choice verbiage. He looked right at me and said two things. First, in no uncertain terms, that I definitely was not quitting; and second, to get out of the fraternity house now before I said/did something else stupid. And then he literally shoved me out the door. And I did what he said, because you just didn’t mess with Parker.

I saw him the next day and sheepishly went up to apologize for, well, basically being a horse’s ass. He looked right at me and very emphatically told me he had no idea what I was talking about. It never came up again.

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“They loved you too,” he said. “Please don’t forget how they lived.” That’s Parker. In the midst of the most tragic event in his life, he’s helping to ease the pain of hundreds of kids.

You can see it here. A quick aside to the Fox station in Tampa Bay. I was a journalist for more than 20 years, including being a publisher. I realize times are tough and you need all the advertising revenue you can get. But get serious and dump the stupid ads playing right before you show a video of a father who has just lost his two children. That’s why people are disgusted with news. I’m disgusted.

Parker grieves and his fraternity brothers with him. The e-mails are flying about the upcoming memorial service in Parker’s hometown. Flight information, cell numbers and questions on who’s driving or needs a ride are traded.

The Brotherhood is coming together.

And while that goes on, we are trying to make sense of this senseless tragedy. Trying to do, or say, what we can to help one of our own. For me, it’s to write this blog. It’s for Parker, it’s for me, it’s for the other brothers. Because I’m a writer and right now, I just don’t know what else to do. I, we, want to fix it. We can’t. But we do what we can.

Out of hundreds of blogs, I have only cried three times while writing one: the near death of the middle Son of Thunder; the death of the Little Black Dress’s mom; the death of The Dress’s dad.

Today makes four.

As I read through the e-mails, I am comforted by words we all want to hear, words we need to hear:

That Parker is holding up; that his strength and composure are an inspiration to others, especially the kids he spoke to; that his children are “safe in heaven” as one classmate said; that some good, however far off that seems, will come out of this …

… That he knows, whether in body or spirit, we are there.

The Brotherhood is coming together.

Yours In The Bond.