You can always see the sadness in someone's eyes.
And recognize the feeling all to well. Life has taught me over and over that coincidences don't exist, what appears like a coincidence is an illusion. Everything happens for a reason, even if the reason isn't obvious at the time, or may never be revealed at all.
This very concept becomes a hard pill to swallow when it's applied to bad things happening in our lives. I went through such an episode just recently.
Regardless of my personal hardship, the reactions are the same for most everyone. I was devastated by the outcome of my circumstance, along with that feeling came anger followed by depression and finally the appropriate emotion of grief. You bet! I questioned my fate, I cried out loud over my loss and asked "why?" more often than I could remember. Unable to function or deal with people though people that crossed my path often had nothing but the intention to help me through it all.
"Why?" I also questioned God, this entity I trusted and had faith would protect me and my family, the One who answered prayers. Then I wondered if He even existed, perhaps he's the illusion. But I just wasn't able to accept that deep down and therefore the next reaction was "where's was he? How could he have abandoned me?"
Somehow, I reconciled with Him. Somehow I didn't loose my faith as I thought I might. God showed up in the form of friends and strangers alike, unexpected people I never thought would come to offer help. Some even revealed their inner most painful experiences in hopes of helping me not feel alone with my own.
Then one day, I met a gentleman at a business meeting who right away saw something wasn't quite right with me. Perhaps it was my body language or the blank look in my eyes that gave me away. My loss and my grief still emerged months later, just when I felt I was done grieving. Anyway when I told him the sad event that had transpired in my life, he shared what many had been saying but in a way that made the words carry more weight.
"You may never see the reason why bad things happen to good people" he said taking a pause to let me sink that in. "Bad things just happen, and sometimes - if not always - there is a reason." He continued to tell me about his friend "Many years ago, my friend got into a car accident on his way to work. He cursed his bad luck. The incident made him late for work but that was the good thing you see, he worked at the world trade center and that day was 9/11" He looked at me pressing his lips together as to say don't question it, just know that coincidences don't exist.
"Perhaps his life was spared for the benefit of someone else, somewhere in he future."
No, nobody ever knows, and we can create many scenarios to console ourselves, in the end the only way we can truly deal with any bad circumstance in our life is to know that it is, what it is. And there is absolutely no sense in asking why. Trust that there is a reason and you may or may not ever uncover it.