I’m in the process of trying to reschedule some of my callbacks in Phoenix, which were to begin on Wednesday, so that I can attend Sarah’s wake and funeral (and hopefully sing at the latter). It looks like I will be able to do it and still make my Friday interviews.

I gotta say, though, this whole process is making me realize how much what’s happened has not fully sunken in. As I make these plans and I look at the pictures of Gimpi* on my homepage, I keep catching myself half-thinking that I’m going to get to chat with her when I go home to visit. Seeing my old choir buddies, and singing “A Welsh Lullaby” together one last time — and catching up with Gimpi — seems like an entirely worthy endeavour, well worth the plane ticket. After all, we haven’t talked in quite a while; it would be nice to have a little chat! But… no. No, Gimpi’s gone. This is only a split-second, quasi-conscious thought process, but it’s a painful stab in the gut every time I go through it.

On a more philosophical note, one thing Sarah’s death has reminded me of is what you might call the “equality of tragedy” principle. We sometimes get hung up on comparing mega-tragedies: “ranking” a tragedy like Katrina among the “worst disasters ever,” wondering whether Katrina is really “our tsunami,” comparing the death toll that was to the death toll that might have been, etc. And there is certainly validity to all of these endeavors. Yet, at a human level, experiencing a personal tragedy reminds you that, to the people directly affected, it doesn’t matter whether 10 people or 10,000 people died; what matters is the one person you care about who is ripped away from you far too soon. The grieving 9/11 widow, the stricken Katrina husband, the father whose daughter is killed by a drunk driver, the son whose mother takes her own life — all of these people are, roughly speaking, equal in terms of their suffering. Whether your personal tragedy has a national dimension or not — whether or not it’s “newsworthy” — you still grieve.

*Sarah got the nickname “Gimpi” because she was on crutches for a while, after getting into some sort of accident, toward the end of my senior year. (I forget the details now.) As recently as last fall, I was still calling her “Gimpi.” It was, of course, a term of endearment.