On Tuesday I noticed a lot of RIP posts in my Facebook newsfeed. It turns out that someone who I went to high school with, just a year younger than me, was killed. His name was Kevin, and although we didn't know each other, I knew of him.
Kevin was on an amazing bike trip from Maryland to Miami, where he planned to propose to his girlfriend. This past Monday Kevin decided to stop at McDonalds to eat and charge his cell phone. He was only about 100 miles from Miami. Kevin was talking on his cell phone outside of the McDonalds when out of nowhere another man started stabbing him repeatedly. The attacker thought that Kevin was instructing people to kill him. In fact Kevin was simply talking to his girlfriend. Obviously the attacker is insane.
Kevin's family and girlfriend are naturally devastated, as are his friends. How do they even begin to process an event like this? Death is very tricky to deal with in it's own right, but in this situation it's impossible to apply any sort of logic in figuring out why this happened. I like to view problems as temporary, and focus on solutions. But this sort of detached rational analysis is a bit hard for me to perform in a case like this. Tonight was the night Kevin was set to propose to his girlfriend, but unfortunately that will never happen. There is no way to read about this without coming away sad.
All I can do is hope for the best for everyone who was close to Kevin.