RIVER CITY JOURNAL: SOMETIMES IT IS HARD TO UNDERSTAND LIFE...OR DEATH

The world shared the joy of seven tiny infants and gasped at the news of eight shootings in a high school. Is there a connection?

The news of the world around us has been at one extreme or the other in recent days. Consider the birth of the septuplets in Iowa, a cause for joy and celebration. And consider the shootings at the high school in Kentucky. Was this some sort of global tit for tat? For each new life in Iowa, some high school student in Kentucky has to die or be put in harm's way?

These are questions without answers. None of us has the right words when tragedy strikes. And some of us are able to join the celebration of the multiple births only because we know that feeding and caring for seven infants under one roof isn't our problem.

I like to think I have a healthy respect for life. I attribute that to my upbringing on a farm where hard lessons are learned early on. After all, a respect for life embraces at least an acknowledgement of death.

I've been involved in the whole cycle -- birth to death -- on many occasions. As a child I remember a mama cat that would sit in my lap on the front porch of our farmhouse on a summer day. Imagine my bewilderment -- I was only 7 or 8 years old -- when that cat started having kittens right there in my lap.

Later on, when I was a bit older, my stepfather decided to raise Hereford cattle instead of the black Angus of which he was always so proud. A big difference in the breeds, however, is that Angus cows give birth quite easily in most cases, but Hereford cows usually require assistance to deliver a calf. I've assisted in many a delivery, not all of which had happy endings.

Once we had a collie who crawled under our house -- remember when farmhouses had neither basement nor foundation, only piles of rocks to hold them up? -- and had puppies. We knew they were there, but no one wanted to crawl under the house. Finally, my aunt came and wiggled under the house and started bringing out the pups, one by one. Honest to goodness, there were 14 in all, every one of them as cute as a newborn collie can be. I say collie, but in fact the father was an unknown quantity, so I don't know what the pups would have looked like when fully grown.

It was a practical matter on most farms -- at least the ones I know about -- that certain decisions had to be made about pets and livestock and wildlife that were both brutal and necessary. My stepfather knew we couldn't have 15 collies roaming around the farm. If they turned wild, they could become a nuisance. And he certainly didn't want to see them suffer needlessly.

So he did what you've seen your father or grandfather do, if you grew up on a farm and if you're old enough to remember. He put the pups in a burlap sack and took them to the pond.

Perhaps it is too easy to dwell on death and the harsh realities of the living, but I'm inclined to think that without at least some notion of death, we can't really appreciate life to its fullest.

Take the parents of those septuplets. Their joy is tempered with the full realization that their newborns aren't entirely out of the woods yet. So many odds are against both multiple births and premature deliveries. It would be foolhardy not to come to grips with the fact that each day of life is a special blessing that is made even more special by the shadow of death.

And take the parents of those high school students in Kentucky. My guess is not a single one of them wondered that fateful morning if their children would come home from school alive. But each and every one of those parents has had his or her scrape with the fear -- no, terror -- of death of a beloved child at one time or another. That's what parents do: worry about their children. But rarely do worry and reality coincide. Death comes as a bolt out of the blue more often than not. We still haven't figured out how to fit death into a neat and suitable timetable.

Surely you have had your own thoughts about the septuplets and the unexplainable shooting in West Paducah. In your private musings, remember the words from Ecclesiastes:

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.

A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

~R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.