No Words

How do you write about 43 people dying a horrible death far too soon? What is there that can possibly be said about husbands, sons, fathers, brothers, best friends, all gone in a flash? (I am not leaving out the female members of the crew; I just have no idea if they were mothers/wives/etc. But they were someone's daughters, and someone's dear friends.) Yet how do you not write about it? This is the silent struggle that's been going on in some corner of my brain since the Lokomotiv crash. And I've also been thinking about tragedies like this in general. What makes this more horrifying than any other plane or bus crash where people are killed? Nothing. Nothing but the fact that hockey players (and fans) everywhere are kind of one big, albeit dysfunctional, family. Not being interested in other sports, I don't know if two complete strangers, upon finding out they play (or love) the game, instantly have a bond and can talk forever about it. So, even though I am not and never was a fan of Lokomotiv (that's not to say I disliked the team, I'm just saying I have no connection other than: it's hockey), this tragedy ripped a hole in my heart and I still can't get my head around it. And judging from the reactions I've seen from friends, on Twitter, on Facebook, and from people I don't even know, it affected many people the same way. Some of the guys I play open hockey with are Russian, and it wasn't long after the news broke that the de-facto "GM" of the group sent an email out with condolences. One of the Russian guys (the one I always say is so scary and intimidating) responded with a candid email about how heart-broken they were. I wanted to say something to one of the guys yesterday morning but couldn't imagine what would be appropriate, especially as we sat quietly on the bench watching the play.

The videos and pictures coming out of the memorial service are gut-wrenching. And as a Ranger fan, it's hard not to recall another Russian casket completely covered in a mountain of flowers, just a few short years ago. I have a personal tradition of lighting a candle when someone's death affects me, and letting it burn as long as it can, to light the way for their soul as it makes it's journey to wherever it's going. I guess it's silly and sentimental, but it feels important to me. But lighting 43 candles really isn't feasible, so to:

Vitaly Anikeenko
Yury Bakhvalov
Mikhail Balandin
Alexander Belyayev
Gennady Churilov
Pavol Demitra
Robert Dietrich
Marat Kalimulin
Alexander Kalyanin
Alexander Karpovtsev
Andrei Kiryukhin
Nikita Klyukin
Igor Korolev
Nikolai Krivonosov
Yevgeny Kunnov
VyacheslavKuznetsov
Stefan Liv
Nadezhda Maksumova
Jan Marek
Vladimir Matyushkin
Brad McCrimmon
Sergei Ostapchuk
Vladimir Piskunov
Karel Rachunek
Ruslan Salei
Yelena Sarmatova
Yelena Shavina
Maxim Shuvalov
Yevgeny Sidorov
Karlis Skrastins
Pavel Snurnitsyn
Daniil Sobchenko
Andrei Solontsev
Ivan Tkachenko
Pavel Trakhanov
Yury Urychov
Josef Vasicek
Alexander Vasyunov
Alexander Vyukhin
Artem Yarchuk
Igor Zhevelov
Sergei Zhuravlyov
Andrei Zimin

...safe journey.