Mindless tragedies typically make the world really feel irredeemable.
Adam Johnson, previously of the NHL’s Pittsburgh Penguins, was killed on the ice throughout an Elite Ice Hockey League recreation in England on Oct. 28.
In line with USA Today, 24-year-old Ryan Wolfe — Johnson’s girlfriend of three years — has since found an engagement ring within the residence they shared.
Household associates confirmed that J0hnson, 29, had meant to suggest to Wolfe.
Grant Clafton, certainly one of Johnson’s former coaches, described the slain participant as a “joyful grump” who ultimately “turned simply joyful. And everyone knows Ryan was the rationale.”
“I used to be trying ahead to the life that Ryan and Adam have been creating and deserved. And my coronary heart breaks for her,” Clafton mentioned at Johnson’s memorial.
Johnson was killed in the course of the second interval of a recreation between his Nottingham Panthers and the Sheffield Steelers.
As Johnson carried the puck into the Steelers’ defensive zone, he started veering towards the center of the ice. At that time, he collided with Steelers participant Matt Petgrave, whose left skate slashed Johnson’s throat.
Johnson collapsed to the ice and was later pronounced useless at a hospital.
On social media, video of the incident brought about a firestorm of controversy. Some thought Petgrave raised his skate deliberately, whereas others deemed the collision a freak accident.
On Tuesday, South Yorkshire police arrested an opposing participant — presumably Petgrave — on “suspicion of manslaughter.” The English justice system will decide the remainder.
After all, even when Petgrave is convicted, Wolfe will really feel nothing resembling justice.
At Johnson’s funeral final week in Minnesota, the place the couple grew up and met each other, the younger girl learn a tribute to Johnson as if he have been nonetheless right here — the form of factor she may need learn on their marriage ceremony day.
“You’ve been so amazingly supportive and type to me for the reason that day we met. And I couldn’t have been extra grateful for it. I at all times thought that possibly if I used to be fortunate sufficient, after a lifetime collectively, that I would begin to be extra such as you,” Wolfe mentioned, in line with the Daily Mail.
Later, when describing Johnson’s goals of beginning a farm, she envisioned him in his new house.
“I simply hope in heaven they let you’ve your farm, and all of the cows and chickens your little coronary heart needs,” she mentioned.
Lastly, she shifted to the previous tense.
“To me you have been all the things. You have been my house, my finest pal, my sounding board, my rock, my protected haven and the love of my life. I’m by no means gonna cease desirous about you, lacking you and loving you till we will be collectively once more.”
After the dying of Abigail Adams on Oct. 28, 1818, her husband John Adams — the Founding Father and second U.S. president — obtained a letter from his pal, Thomas Jefferson.
As an alternative of providing what he referred to as “ineffective condolances,” Jefferson gave his grieving pal a imaginative and prescient of a wonderful future.
Collectively, Jefferson wrote, he and Adams may sit up for the day once they would “ascend in essence to an ecstatic assembly with the buddies we’ve got beloved & misplaced and whom we will nonetheless love and by no means lose once more.”
Jefferson had it proper. Condolences really feel like platitudes. Visions of ecstatic conferences, nevertheless, give hope.
Till then — exhausting as it’s — we should remind ourselves {that a} world through which we all know tragedies can also be the one form of world through which we will study the which means and worth of affection.
This text appeared initially on The Western Journal.
