The Brilliant Life of Christina Taylor Green And “The Why Above All Whys”
“The whys of this story, why Johnny should have been struck just in that part of him that would have been most fruitful, why his clock should have been broken just at this particular time in his life, . . . the why above all whys which is why any child should die, the whys and wherefores of the celestial bookkeeping involved, if any, I will not go into here.”
Death Be Not Proud, By John Gunther
There are other criteria for measuring a life as well as its duration – quality and intensity.
In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.
On September 11, 2001, Christina Taylor Green entered a violent world on a violent day. Yestyerday, nine years later, her brief life ended as it had begun, on a day of sudden violence. Unlike the day she was born, though, this day Christina was not sheltered safely in the arms of those who loved her, those who welcomed her. What were they thinking while gazing at the new life before them, distracted as they were by history unfolding in the destruction of the World Trade Center towers? Tiny Christina had just arrived as others were leaving, buried beneath megatons of rubble not too far away.
Sudden violence and the deaths of innocents have always been with us. There’s no hiding from the chaos around us. Christina’s family knew that upon her arrival on 9/11; they underscored the random and merciless choices that death often makes.
So, yesterday, in a Safeway parking lot, as amoral chance would have it, Christina Taylor Green, recently elected a member of her elementary school student government, sidled up to her Congresswoman, Gabrielle Giffords, for a “meet and greet.” And there, within a few feet of her, Christina’s life ended in chaos purposely unleashed through the end of the barrel at the end of a string of declining fortunes of a madman, Jared Laughlin.
Green attended Mesa Verde Elementary School. She was the only girl on the CDO baseball team – she loved the sport, as well as horseback riding and swimming.
