Yes It Is, It’s True: Anything worse than losing a child?

Composer Gustav Mahler’s most controversial musical piece by a wide margin was “Kindertotenleider,” or “Songs for Children Who Died.”

Mathematician and infamous atheist Bertrand Russell’s most controversial comment was that it is almost impossible to believe in a just, loving, benevolent God while sitting at the bedside of a dying child.

I’ve thought a lot about these two historical figures and what they did in confronting this depressing subject. Indeed, it’s difficult to imagine anything worse than burying a child. Many would say they’d rather die in their place.

The tragic death Easter Sunday of 21-year-old Jayde Van Zalen, a Hopkins High School graduate, prompted these thoughts. I didn’t know her at all, but her story deeply touched me, as did the sad story about 11-year-old Kaelee Noble, who died of a brain tumor in 2014, and 21-year-old Wayland High School graduate Amber Sparks, who died in 2008 of ovarian cancer.

They weren’t the first, unfortunately. I recall being affected in the same way about the death of 20-year-old Terri Strach, daughter of Sara and Pat Wilde, the latter a Wayland High School graduate. I was moved in the same way about Kathryn Brenner, daughter of Wayland Supt. Bob and Mrs. Brenner, who died in 1993 from cystic fibrosis.

The night I learned of Kathy Brenner’s death I was listening for the first time to Mahler’s gorgeous “Adagietto” for strings and harp, which he wrote to declare his forever love for wife Alma, but Italian film director Visconti used it for a tragic death scene in “Death in Venice.” Ever since, I have listened to it and Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings” for the cathartic experience of sympathy over a death.

Longtime friend Walter G. Tarrow told me the most tragic deaths indeed are of young people who are adolescents or approaching that time of life because they are just beginning to explore the world and understand it. He told me a very young child, a newborn, doesn’t really understand what’s going on around him or her.

I sense that those closest to Kaelee Noble gave her a seriously heavy dose of the promise of heaven to lift her spirits. Perhaps the same was done for Kathy Brenner, Terri Strach, Amber Sparks and Jayde Van Zalen.

All I know is that one of the biggest reasons I feel so awful about their tragic stories is that there was nothing I could do for them, their stories leave me helpless.

So if Walter G. was right, we can take some comfort when very small children die. And we can take comfort when great grandma dies at 90 because she led a long and good life.

But I do a poor job of dealing with the deaths of young people who were just beginning to taste the joys of life. For what it’s worth, my heart goes out to the Van Zalen family.