Thursday, June 28, 2007

Who deserves to die?




DeCarlo Polk, a class of 2007 graduate from Hillside High School, collapsed and died suddenly Wednesday, June 27th while playing basketball at his uncle's house in Tennessee. Resuscitation efforts by his uncle and the EMS failed to bring him back. Carlos, as we called him, was a role model student at HHS. He was an IB Student and was a member of the football team and Student Government Association (SGA). He was Homecoming King and he also received a football scholarship to play at St. Augustine in the fall. Carlos was a great kid who will be deeply missed.


My husband learned of his death from another teacher at HHS. Both KB and I knew Carlos, but he and KB were pretty close. KB was an SGA advisor and he taught Carlos in a leadership class. Carlos had already made plans to come spend time with us next fall since we live so close to St. Aug.


When KB told me what happened, we were both in disbelief. We hoped it was just a terrible rumor and maybe someone got their facts mixed up. I just didn't want to believe that this child had died suddenly. He was such a good person and he didn't deserve to die.


I kept thinking that he didn't deserve to die. In thinking about him and life and death, I questioned, "If he didn't deserve to die, who deserves to die?" Often when people die, you hear friends and family of the deceased give accolade after accolade of the person. And normally, people will add, "They didn't deserve to die."

Most people argue that bad people deserve to die, for example ones who have killed others or molested children. I don't think this is a good argument because bad people is very subjective. Who determines whether a person is good or bad? Plus if only bad people died, then there would be no room for repentance and forgiveness (I think I've talked about this on Rell's blog); therefore, Jesus' death would have been in vain and there would be no hope for changing one's life.


So who deserves to die? I guess no one deserves to die, but we should all be aware of the fact that death comes to both the good and the bad, to the young and to the old, to the saved and to the unsaved.

Cherish life because it is short and death can come to anyone unexpectedly.


R.I.P. Carlos

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

My prayers are with Carlos' family and the two of you, especially KB. Know that your time was no spent in vain.


We all deserve to die, but that's almost irrelevant, because we're all going to die anyway. It's best that we just live life the best way possible so that when we do die, our lives wouldn't have been wasted.

Rell said...

I'm really sorry to hear yo. Prayers for his family and yall...

Dr. Ronda Taylor Bullock said...

Thanks fellas.

I guess its just hard to deal with when its such a young person and unexpected.

Anonymous said...

RB, unexpected deaths are always hard to deal with ... not that expected deaths aren't, but you know what I'm saying. All we can do is live like any of us can be taken out of here tomorrow.

I was talking to Carmen last week about my dad, who will be 66 in September. And even though she already knew how old she was, her face said everything. And I immediately realized what she was thinking, which is something I ironically never thought about before - the grandparents of a number of people we know died before they were 66, including three of Carmen's.

I know that seems cold or whatever, but it is truth. All I can do is make the best of the time I got now. Although the thought of my dad dying took up a lot of my thoughts that day.

My brother is having a CD release concert weekend after next. I almost didn't go, because the plane tickets cost too much. But when I realized that family is invaluable. I coughed it up. We got to start thinking like that on the regular - especially those of us far from our families.

Dr. Ronda Taylor Bullock said...

Gene do you think you and Carmen will eventually move closer to the east coast to be nearer to your family?

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