Heavy heart

Got news today that a dear friend just lost her husband, mother, and uncle in a private plane crash.
It's hard to feel very enthusiastic about the holiday.

Life is awfully hard to understand, sometimes.  Some people coast through with nothing more difficult than the normal ups and downs of life.  Other people get hammered with the most awful tragedies that mortality has to offer.  And there is absolutely no rhyme or reason to it.  
We all want to know why, so we can reassure ourselves that it can't happen to us.  But it can, and for some of us, some of the most undeserving, it does.
There is some comfort to be found in the plan of salvation, but it feels hollow, sometimes, compared to the extremity of the loss and pain to be endured in this life.  My friend, only in her 40's, will be a widow for the rest of her life.  She has lost her mother, the person she would probably otherwise have leaned on the most to help her through this, and the loss of whom by itself is awful.  Her uncle's family has lost a husband and father.  Stephanie's three sons, one still in high school, will not have their father to guide them through their lives. This good family, in an instant, has been dropped into the whirlwind.
It's Thanksgiving tomorrow, and I sure have a lot to be thankful for; among the top of my list is my husband and my mom.  My friend has just lost these, and that leaves me with an extremely heavy heart...