In Memorium for the West Virginians

Coal miners are big and strong and brave and fearless., and they gamble with their lives every time they enter the underworld to scour the veins of Mother Earth for fuel to keep their families warm and fed.  If they are lucky, they live long enough to help raise their grandchildren before they succumb to years of coal dust in their lungs.  An easier death has claimed these men at the bottom of the Sago mine: no panic, no fear, no pain, no worries about their families being taken care of by the company and community, when  they’re gone.  It was an easy death together, as they held each other for warmth and rest, to sleep, perhaps to dream.  We cry for our own losses, not theirs.  They’ve won peace.