It Tolls for Thee

Headlines at this moment on Syracuse.com include: "Hundreds gather at funeral for Jenni-Lynn Watson" and "Syracuse toddler's death blamed on gang revenge." I can remember few if any times that reading headlines like these was so difficult for me. The tragedies our small Chittenango community has recently experienced make those of which I have only a peripheral attachment, I know Jenni-Lynn's cousin Mark, and those to which I have no actual attachment at all, the death of 20 month-old Rashad Walker, Jr., even more horrible than they would be under normal circumstance. The violent death of anyone is awful; the violent death of children, and in this group I include both Jenni-Lynn and Rashad, is despicable. I hurt deep down inside for them and all. I'm not going to try to explain this "species pain" I feel. I will leave it to John Donne who said it with nearly impossible eloquence when he wrote,

No man is an island, entire of itself;

every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea,

Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were,

as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were:

any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind,

and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls;

it tolls for thee.

These words come from Donne's "Meditation XVII," an essay, although the lines above are often printed as a poem. Reading the whole essay might take 5 minutes. It's a worthwhile read with the only logical conclusion.