One Death is a Tragedy

Mood: raging against the unfairness of it all

The body of an aquaintance of mine turned up in the N. Saskatchewan River this morning after he'd been missing for two weeks. This isn't someone I knew especially well, but he was on the UofT ACM Programming Competition team, so I saw him at practices twice a week for a period of about six months. We ate pizza and talked about programming problems.

Normally I'm not one to talk about my feelings, but I have to find some sort of outlet this time. There's no word yet on whether the death was accidental or not, but either way, I'm angry. I'm pretty sure this isn't the PC reaction, judging from the flood of almost identically worded email messages expressing condolences and sympathy being sent to the family. If I were in their shoes, those messages would make me feel worse, not better, so I'm not sending one myself. Maybe this is the wrong way to react, since some members of the family probably feel differently than I do about the expressions of support, but it has the virtue of being honest and heartfelt. And maybe some of them do feel the same as I do.

Angry.

Yes, upset, very upset. But not the hysterical, falling apart kind of upset. The kind that motivates you to go out, find out exactly what happened, and do something to stop it from ever happening again.