Making Sense of the Senseless
The pain cannot be ignored
There’s something particularly tragic and unexplainable and cosmically unfair about the death of Megan Keleman. She was murdered on the evening of Aug. 14, 2024, while in the drive-through at a Taco Bell a few miles from where I live. She was 25 years old.
The randomness and senseless-yet-intentional violence of it all is overwhelming. And for Megan’s family and others who knew and loved her, it’s special type of hell on Earth. I hate what they are going through. When people say they “can’t imagine” what they’re experiencing, I don’t think that’s entirely precise. It’s more the case that we can imagine it but it’s so unpleasant that we don’t want to imagine it.
Here’s a little bit about Megan.
Megan recently graduated with her MBA from Cleveland State University (CSU), where I’m a professor. Although I regularly teach a required course in the MBA program, I didn’t have her as a student. CSU President Laura Bloomberg sent a note to the campus community in which she shared the tragic news and remembered Megan, stating:
Megan was a recent graduate from CSU, having completed her Master of Business Administration this past May. She also earned her bachelor’s degree from CSU in Finance and Financial Management Services. During her time as a student, Megan was an active leader on campus. For more than six years, she worked in the Office of Undergraduate Admissions, initially supporting campus tours and new student orientations before serving as a graduate assistant. She also was a founding member and president of the Alpha Sigma Alpha sorority, president of the Panhellenic Association, director of finance for our Student Government Association, and editor-in-chief and managing editor for The Cauldron.
Megan believed in the impact of non-profit organizations on our communities. Along with her MBA, she completed a Certificate in Non-Profit Management. For the past two years, Megan had been working for Shelter Care, Inc., a residential treatment and crisis intervention program for children in Tallmadge, Ohio. She was also an active volunteer, coaching young girls as part of the Girls on the Run nonprofit organization and raising funds to support Special Olympics Ohio.
President Bloomberg concluded by writing,
We send our deepest sympathies to Megan’s family, friends and loved ones. We have lost a caring, engaged and optimistic member of the CSU community. As a talented writer, Megan herself once provided advice on handling such tragic situations, and I suggest we all consider her words. “Happiness is forceful,” she wrote in a 2020 article for The Cauldron. “Surrounding yourself with positive people is a great way to help you in challenging times because their happiness is contagious.” Be kind to yourself and each other in the days ahead.
From these details and those shared in Megan’s obituary, it’s clear that she oriented much in her life toward the betterment of others and our world.
Here’s a news report discussing what happened.
God’s Megaphone amid a Special Type of Hell
While I can’t understand fully what the Keleman family is going through, my knowledge of the research on these types of situations combined with my personal experience do provide some evidence on the matter.
If you’ve ever woken up from a nightmare and then been suddenly relieved by the realization that it was a dream, take that experience, and then subtract the dream realization and the relief it provided. That begins to describe the nonstop cycle of visceral, psychological, emotional, and spiritual pain that such an experience calls forth.
The sudden, unnatural, violent, and complete unfairness of it all compounds all of these reactions. Regardless of one’s beliefs, it makes one wonder why, and especially for those close to Megan, why her or why us.
That is a big piece of the mystery of suffering, particularly when viewed in light of what we might think is fair or just in a divine sense. It’s something that we can call, as C. S. Lewis phrased it in the title of one of his works, The Problem of Pain.
The inherent pain of human existence can strike quickly, forcing us to reckon with it. Even if we avoid it or numb ourselves, we must at some point stare straight into the abyss and grapple with reality as tough as that might be. Lewis put it this way:
We can rest contentedly in our sins and in our stupidities; and anyone who has watched gluttons shovelling down the most exquisite foods as if they did not know what they were eating, will admit that we can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.
To what will God’s megaphone rouse the deaf world toward? I don’t know for sure and it seems to vary from case to case, but it appears self-evident that that’s the question life and its suffering thrusts upon us. Alongside why and why me, suffering poses another question, one that demands an answer even if that answer is avoidance or a refusal to answer.
That question is how will I react.
In the immediate aftermath, my humble suggestion to those close to situations like Megan’s is to take care of the “six inches in front of your face” as described here. Attend to what needs to be done, allowing others to help as much as possible. Hold onto each other and to your faith. As I’ve tried to articulate elsewhere, resilience is a team sport.
Realize that your life is irrevocably changed. Grief counselors have told me that acute grief lasts one to three years and that chronic grief lasts a lifetime. I think that’s true. It’s also true that a day will come when you will feel joy and gratitude and excitement about tomorrow. At times this will feel impossible to believe, but hold onto it with white knuckles and open yourself to the possibility.
For those in supporting roles surrounding the Keleman family and others in similar situations, be there for them. Be proactive in reaching out and providing help. Don’t be a passive bystander—this is your moment to be the Good Samaritan, to run toward them in solidarity. And your support should continue into the months and years ahead, long after the condolences cards and deliveries of flowers end. If you don’t know what to say or what not to say, here’s a guide.
Making sense of the senseless is one of the hardest things to do, if it can be done at all in this life. Yet we can rest assured that bad things sometimes do indeed happen to good people. That much is clear from practical experience and as illustrated in the Old Testament story of Job. To paraphrase Matthew 5:45, the rain does indeed fall on the just and the unjust.
Words fail in times like these, and what almost kills us does not necessarily make us stronger. It’s also true that such circumstances call upon us deeply to reorient our thinking, to prioritize that which matters most, and to become that which the world needs—refusing to succumb to a belief that creation itself is evil despite the evil it sometimes so tragically allows.
References and for further reading
Lewis, Clive Staples. The problem of pain. Zondervan, 2001.
Ben, enjoyed this article. I had seen this in the news and it was shocking to me. Hope all is well.
I am sorry you are becoming an expert writer on loss, tragedy, and death. You must have an enormous capacity for empathy and care, as your spirit can hold the recent experiences in your heart and you write in a way that compels us to enter the story as best we can and be the voice of compassion. Blessings, my brother.