Yesterday afternoon I was surfing the net, as usual on my day off, and was stunned to get an email from the Canucks (one of my email subscriptions to keep me in touch with the West Coast). Two things struck me: first, the content. One of their 21 yr old rookie hockey players, Luc Bourdon, had just been killed. The second thing that immediately stood out to me was that literally the news was just hours old. His death had just occured in New Brunswick after lunchtime and it was 2pm my time that I read the email. I thought, oh my god, that poor family. I'll always remember the first few hours, the first day, the first week- all of it. It's like a scar that you have inside you, that only people who have lost someone suddenly, shockingly, can understand or sympathize with. It will be tough going for weeks, months and even years from this date. It changes you forever in ways you cannot express or understand. My heart also went out to the semi truck driver, as I can only imagine the shock he or she must be in having been the unlucky one to collide with Luc head-on on his motorcycle. I feel for them and the grief and shock they must be feeling.

I went to a baseball game tonite, and prior to the game beginning they paid tribute with a moment of silence for Luc. Just a year prior he had trained in Manitoba with the Manitobas Moose before moving up to the Vancouver Canucks between late 2006 and into 2007.

So sad, when it's a young life just beginning - amazingly sad.

(painting called Discouragement by Jenedy Paige, artist)