The email began with “I’m hanging in there. My husband passed away in an accident in June. Been very difficult, but I’m doing my best.”

I don’t know Jane well. She is my contact for a company in a southern state that our lab has used for several years for online learning and record keeping. If I have a question or concern I send her an email, and she usually sends her cheerful, informative, reply within the hour.

I responded to her email expressing my condolences. I knew it was a situation in which a few words from a stranger a thousand miles away could hardly provide any solace. But the friendly personality always apparent in Jane’s emails made me confident that she had many friends who would help her family in such unimaginable circumstances.

I did some ‘net research. Googling Jane’s last name as well as the state her company was located in I was able to locate her husband’s obituary and a video of a brief segment on a local TV newscast. An unusual accident, an unexpected death, a local tragedy.

And it shook me. Death is not a stranger. I have lost parents, in-laws, a sister, and many other relatives and friends. Professionally I faced death daily, particularly in the early part of my training and career. But this suddenness was different and saddening, even if it was just someone I “almost” knew.

Since I received that email the country has moved on, the focus is now on the hatred, bigotry, and yes, death, in Virginia. But my thoughts keep drifting back to that one lost life from the month before and the widening circles of feelings that it engendered until they reached me, like ripples on a pond.

Those ripples of empathy are what we need to keep us human, to help us conquer haters and hate. We are seeing where a lack of empathy can take us, it is now time to move away from there. Share the word.

The above are the views of the authors and are not the official views of UroPartners, LLC.

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