By Scott

Calling all atheists, agnostics, religious people, Christians, Hindus, Islam, Buddhists, Jewish, secular or religious, Wiccans, spiritualists, near death experiencers, philosophers, artists or poets -- what is the meaning of life? I know, I know, the most important and colossal issue of are time and throughout history. But wait before you answer, I need to throw a wrench into the works. My ten year old son Connor died from a heart attack related to leukemia. See my testimonial: Where are you, God?

When we were in the intensive care unit at Children's Hospital we were thrust into a chamber of horrors. Our son was unconscious, hooked up to every machine imaginable and the only thing that was more nightmarish was seeing the horror, in the face of my wife, when my son coughed up blood before he was admitted to intensive care. The Doctor told us that my son's heart rate and breathing were that of a marathon runner, running consecutive marathons. Walking through a children's intensive care ward is a horror show beyond comparison. No horror movie or Halloween, haunted house could ever come close. My wife and I walked by so many children from babies to teens, tethered to machines, that to our eyes looked of medieval torture devices. The week my son was in intensive care they shut the ward down twice to perform open heart surgery on a three month old. Later we would learn that baby did not make it nor did the baby of a couple we befriended in the waiting room who we would eventually see at our monthly meetings at Compassionate Friends. And remember the horror I saw in my wife's face, that horror was plastered in the woebegone eyes of everyone in the waiting room, an observation that made me realize I was wearing the same face.

With this information, my son dying at ten years old and he only represents any child in the world who has died and any baby who was born to die -- What possible meaning can we assign to life; these children didn't even get a chance to experience life, What purpose or meaning to life could there possibly be when children lives are cut so short?