6.30 in the morning, radio on. "News. There's only one headline this morning..."
Those words are always enough to make you sit back and brace yourself for what's to come. Today, somehow, the host's voice gave it all away before the words were even spoken.
A bus with schoolkids.On their way back from a national tradition: the ski trip with school in 6th elementary grade. Tunnel in Swiss. Accident. 28 lives lost. 22 kids. 11 years old. 24 others injured.
The songs are different, the usual jokes are skipped. Every 5 minutes the tragedy is repeated. Slowly we come to sense the scope of what happened.
28 lives lost, 22 kids. That's 28 devastated families. You send your kid off with school, off to have fun, only to never see it back. Parents & kids, brothers & sisters, ... were supposed to see each other again today. Instead they woke up to the worst possible nightmare, the bare harshness of reality. Unbearable doubt for those families involved as a list with names of the victims has yet to be drawn up.
What a surreal thought. The parents of these kids were all brought to Swiss, not knowing whether they'd see their kid back alive. Can you imagine knowing an accident this terrible has happened, your kid is involved, and not know for 12 hours if it has survived? Words falter and silence remains.
What a mayhem it must have been for the relief workers, for the kids that survived. From countries with different languages, how are you supposed to communicate? All six adults present in the bus that might have been able to calm the kids down and identify them, lost their lives. Can you imagine being that kid, not having anyone to take care of you, not being able to explain where you're from or what happened?
The impact must have been tremendous. 52 people on the bus. 28 casualties, 24 more injured. The parents who've lost their kid have to help identifying them, one injured kid, still in danger of losing its life, seems yet to be identified. The unbearable doubt continues.
Tragedies like these take such immense proportions, especially when kids are involved. Kids are about the most sacred and innocent creatures in our society. Kids have their whole lives in front of them.
But these kids are injured for life. 22 of them will never get to finish elementary school, never go to secondary, never get to break their heads over what to study, what to do with their lives. They will never get to go to the scouts and get a totem, never get to fall in love, grow up, have kids of their own. Never get to do all the things we're supposed to do in our lives, not as a kid, not as an adult. 6 other lives suddenly ended as well. The frailty of life sinks in.
28 lives lost against the wall of a dark, cold tunnel.
You don't want to be their families. You wish you never have to feel your world crumble from under your feet and live through such pain.
& all the radio can do really, is play these sad, sad songs. Because somehow we all grieve, and we all feel immensly for these families.
"No one said it was easy
Nobody ever said it would be this hard
Oh, take me back to the start"
(Coldplay)
