The Tragedy of Renee Good [incomplete]

Loss of Life to an Atheist

I am an atheist, and I try to be a non-problematic stoic. Inside that framework, to me, the greatest loss is the loss of principles, followed by the loss of life.

The thing about a loss of life is that there is no returning from it, and, for an atheist, there is no vision or belief of anything going beyond. It robs the person who loses their life, and it also robs everyone else of their life.

One of my greatest fears is somehow, accidentally or otherwise, causing the death of someone non-evil. I don’t know how I would move forward knowing that I took everything from someone in that manner.

Loss of Life as a Parent

The idea of experiencing death never really hit for me until I had kids; I love my wife, but she was a whole-ass adult before she ever knew me, and we both know, in broad strokes, what we are about and what we are capable of. I would be absolutely wrecked to lose her, and she’d probably face a couple rough weeks without me [unlike Charlie Kirk, my loss won’t even generate any merch sales].

The kids, though… I want to see every phase of them. I want to be there for everything. I want them to have the parents that I never really had, and they are the family that I never had. I am incredibly greedy of my time with them. The only thing I truly fear is someone in my immediate family being permanently removed from our circle.

An Irreversible Act

Having said all that, there are three specific things that strike me about Renee Good being murdered.

The first is the devastating finality of death. Virtually anything else that can be done to a person- from criminal violence to property theft or damage to the state violating one’s rights- can be remedied in some manner. When someone takes a life, though, there is nothing that can ever restore what’s lost, not even a little. It seems so obvious- we all know what death entails on an intellectual level.

In this moment, I would encourage the people who have spent days now minimizing the death of Renee Good to police procedure and assignment of blame to sit with the idea of death for a moment. A human has been consigned to the eternal nothing; child and spouse have lost a pillar in their lives. Think about what it would mean to never hug someone again, to never read a book or give a gift or eat a cheeseburger ever again. Imagine not having a parent there at a critical moment -a void there where warmth and support reside. Please ]