Asking 'why' as fate steps in

The Boston Herald

Beverly Beckham

It was dark at 6 o'clock Saturday morning, dark and silent. Everyone was somewhere else - the kids in their own places, my husband on a business trip, even the dog in another room. The labored drone of the furnace was the only sound.

I got up ahead of the day, before the sun, the REAL Saturday morning more than an hour away. This dark before sunrise was found time, a 10-dollar bill tucked in a coat pocket to be spent wisely or blissfully frittered away.

Usually I fritter when I'm alone. I feed the dog, make coffee, curl up on the couch and read something frivolous like People magazine.

Last Saturday was an exception. We'd been in New Orleans for a wedding the weekend before, and I still hadn't taken down the Christmas decorations. Seven days after the 12 days of Christmas and my house was dressed up for a party that had ended a week ago.

I took the trash out even before I made my coffee. The ice was black and I didn't see it. Water had seeped in under the garage door and turned the cement floor into a skating rink. I hit it at a stride, flew into the air and landed on my back with a thud.

The dog couldn't come running because I'd shut the door behind me. I thought two things: I can't believe I'm not dead and if I were, it would be a long time before anyone found me.

I pulled myself up. Everything worked. Nothing was broken. But why?

Decades ago my mother slipped one night while walking down her cellar stairs. Just a misstep. She was alone. Her head hit the cement floor, and that was the end of her life as she knew it.

All Saturday I kept replaying all the could-have-beens, the way I replayed them after my mother fell. I had her grabbing the banister, catching herself, grateful the way we always are when we avert disaster. I had her not going down the cellar stairs at all. Why was she doing laundry at night anyway?

Why was I out in the garage at 6 a.m.? And why was I in one piece? Why was I lucky and she wasn't?

At the very least I should have broken SOMETHING. But here I am intact. I don't know why one person can slip and get up and another can slip and have the rest of her life defined by that moment.

Everything happens for a reason, people say. I struggle with this. The reason I fell is because there was ice in the garage. The reason my mother fell is because she missed a step. The reason there is such massive devastation in El Salvador is because a town was built on a mountain on a fault line.

But what is the reason some people fall and get up and some people fall and never get up? And some people can have their whole world fall on top of them and still survive? Happenstance? God? A mother walks out of her house for a minute. She is in her tiny yard when an earthquake strikes and her three daughters are buried alive. But she survives. Why?

"There but for the grace of God, go I" people say when the flight they were supposed to have been on crashes, when they survive a fire, a fall, a shooting, a car wreck, an earthquake, cancer.

But what does this mean? That God picks and chooses who will and who won't suffer? That God doles out his grace?

Why? we ask as children, at every turn. Why? we continue to ask our whole life long, but silently. Because the answer we get "There's a reason for everything" isn't an answer at all.