by Miranda Rhuda

Created on: July 24, 2009

Death comes with no warning, it heeds no notice. It just comes and takes our loved ones away. We struggle to understand. We struggle to find comfort. We struggle to cope. It is not easy to say goodbye.

This is a subject that I have had quite a bit of experience with in my short life. Amongst those that I have lost in the past include my maternal grandmother, my paternal uncle and my best friend. Of those losses, the hardest one to deal with was the death of my best friend. My grandmother was old, her death meant that she was no longer suffering from old age. My uncle was terribly sick with cancer. His death provided peace of mind knowing that he no longer suffered. He was no longer in pain. But the death of my best friend defied everything that I thought I understood about death. I could not understand why the Lord would take someone so young and so beautiful, so unexpectedly.

Kara went on vacation to Missouri with her boyfriend and his family. On the way home she got a migraine headache that lasted the entire drive from Missouri to Ohio and was only getting worse. When she arrived home to her parents, they decided to take her to the emergency room to get her something to ease the discomfort. In and out, they thought... But it didn't turn out that way. She never left the hospital. Six days she spent lying in the hospital bed. She was in a diabetic coma. She had to have her skull drilled to relieve the swelling in her brain. This, the doctor's said would possibly solve the problem. It worked! Or so we thought... she started doing better. Her vitals were looking better, the swelling in her brain was reduced and she was even starting to squeeze people's hand in an effort to respond. We had great hope that she would make it and slowly but surely, come out of her coma. But that was not the case. That is not what God had planned for her.

I came in to see her one morning, after going home to shower and eat and she was completely unresponsive. She was not breathing on her own, the swelling in her brain was increasing again and there was nothing more that they could do for her. Her parents, following the advice of the doctors, turned off the machines and allowed us all to say goodbye.

It hurt. I struggled to find answers. I prayed and prayed and still could not find peace with it. I missed her so badly. We didn't have enough time together. She was too young. She was supposed to be graduating next week. It wasn't fair... It wasn't right. God must have taken the wrong

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