that thing with feathers that perches in the soul

March 25: Tatiana Rurak kneels as she holds her daughter, Oleksandra Rurak, as they watch Ukrainian military members carry the casket of her husband Volodymy Rurak into the Church of the Most Holy Apostles Peter and Paul for his funeral in Lviv, Ukraine. Mr. Rurak was killed in the eastern part of Ukraine fighting against the Russian military.

I just spoke with a colleague who lost a dear friend in a freak auto accident, and it is weighing on me. Her car was stopped at a red light, she was hit from the side when an on-coming driver had a brain aneurysm while driving. He said it correctly: "poof, her life was gone in a second."

And here we are, 4 weeks into this awful, useless conflict on the other side of the world, and this picture of a mother grieving her husband at his funeral brings me to tears. What in the heck are we doing as a group of people, as human beings?

“Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something is worth doing no matter how it turns out.” --Vaclav Havel

photo via {npr}