17.
17 years.
17 years old.
When you teach junior and senior high school students, there are many fringe benefits that go with the job. You get to see students grow physically and intellectually. You witness some young people who overcome tremendous hardships to achieve success. You run into former students who have gone on to do what they love and to do it well.
The worst negative, by far, is when one of your students dies before he or she has had a chance to achieve his or her dreams. In a dozen years as a teacher, I have not seen this happen often, but it still occurs far more frequently than it seems it should.
Among these young people were a trio of 17-year-olds, two young men and a young woman. One was the victim of a vehicle accident, one was a suicide and one was a drug overdose that may have been suicide.
It was strange looking down at the three teenagers, who looked even younger than their relatively few years. These were young people who should have been doing homework, playing sports or performing in the band, going to the prom, dreaming of what they would do with their lives.
No one could imagine the anguish, shock and grief their deaths inflicted upon their families and friends.
No one could begin to make sense of such short lives. That answer is known only by God.
That is the only consoling thought. If they are on their way to God, the three teens will have the ultimate answer.
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God is the answer to unanswerable questions.