April's Cruel Side

Around this time in April, in several past years, I've posted listing some of the best known dark deeds coincidentally all happening in mid-April. My 2013 post went like this:

It never ends does it? Man's inhumanity to man. The dreadful events, deaths and horrible injuries in Boston yesterday are the latest addition to a blood-soaked list of tragedies here in the USA, and let us not forget, in countries abroad - some at our own hands.

I've written before about the darkness of this month in recent US history: 19 April 1995, the Oklahoma City bombing when 168 people, including children, died at the hands of home-grown terrorists; then the shootings at Columbine High School, Colorado on 20 April 1999; and April 16 2007 was the date of the Virginia Tech. massacre when 32 people were killed by a gunman, fellow student of those he murdered.

There's no rational explanation for this growing cluster of horror in what ought to be a happy and optimistic time of year, long winter behind us, trees greening - but .......

And in despair I bowed my head;
"There is no peace on earth," I said;
"For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"
(From Longfellow's Christmas Bells)

In 2010 I wrote the post accessible at
https://twilightstarsong.blogspot.com/2010/04/cruellest-month.html.

These and others can also be accessed via the label cloud in the sidebar, by clicking on "April Events".


In 2019 April is keeping up its cruel reputation: Notre Dame on fire; attacks in Sri Lanka with at least 290 people losing their lives.

On a very personal level (and these pale into insignificance on a world wide scale):

On 23rd April 1992 my father died.
On 21 April 1996 I and my late partner lost everything we owned, except the few clothes we were wearing, my purse and our car, in a fire which consumed the apartment in which we'd lived for 24 years.

This year I found that the lumpectomy carried out a year ago wasn't sufficient, so I underwent full mastectomy left breast. That still wasn't sufficient, so a few days ago I underwent re-excision mastectomy and learned that the right breast ought also to be removed in the near future. As I said, insignificant in the great scheme of things, but a bit wearying for yours truly, again, in a month that promises renewal and all things bright and beautiful.

Let us hope, very sincerely, that future Aprils will not continue in this pattern!

Postscript - The post's title uses a thought from T.S. Eliot's poem The Wasteland.