When a young life is cut short, a community mourns. Wade Edwards of Raleigh had much promise. The N&O’s Jim Jenkins, who
recently wrote a column about Wade and his mother, comments on our loss.
I was pulling out of the driveway in Country Club Hills, and all I could think was: What a terrific kid. And what a blessed kid, to have parents like John Edwards and Elizabeth Anania who had invested so much love, so much concern, so much effort in raising 16-year-old Wade Edwards to be the kind of youngster all of his friends depended on, admired, laughed with and loved.
Elizabeth had been one of the winners in a national essay contest 30 years past, a contest similar to one in which Wade had reached the finals just weeks ago, and that was why I’d come to see them. Wade was washing his Jeep as I pulled up. He still had his tie on, having worked as a courier for his father’s law office. John Edwards and his wife are both lawyers, both extraordinary intellects. And, as became obvious within minutes of speaking with Wade, extraordinary parents to him and his sister, Kate.
And now, hours after Wade was killed in a tragic car accident on his way to the beach for spring break, all that comes to mind is his sweet wonderful mother and her proud smile. Tears do not wash the thought away; words do not ease the grief. On this most spiritual of weekends, there is only the question with no answer, the question asked by every parent, by everyone who’s ever lost someone so young: God, why?
For there are too many parents among us who know this heartbreak. Every year, there are sweet-faced good kids - all kids are good - who are taken from us, who leave us only with the question. With the question, and yes, with the heartbreak, a community’s heartbreak at the unfairness of it all, and the crushing burden of carrying with us, forever, our images of those children - of their faces and their laughter and their crises and their triumphs, and all the times we enjoyed hearing them and helping them and loving them. The carrying is heavy indeed when something so tragic happens; in time, perhaps, the memories become more of a comfort than a burden. We can only pray that they do.
What is there to say? It hurts. It hurts a lot. We must gather ‘round this family now, not to presume that we can fill the emptiness or cure the grief, but to let them know that we share both. Our feelings, our terrible feelings, remind us that we really are the family of humankind. Their loss is our loss, and their child was our child - our classmate, our student, our friend, our brother, our nephew, our grandson.
Everything that could be said seems so inadequate. But it helps to say what we feel anyway. So to John and Elizabeth: I don’t
have kids. If I did, I’d want one just like Wade.