The Weight of Why

I keep replaying that Tuesday afternoon when Aki called me, his voice cracking through the phone like broken glass. "Leif's in the hospital," he said. "Car accident. Charlene and the kids..." He couldn't finish the sentence. Didn't need to.

Three weeks earlier, Leif Johansson had everything. Senior partner at the law firm, beautiful family, that sprawling house in Westchester with the infinity pool. He was the guy who had his shit together while the rest of us were still figuring out our 401 (k)’s. The one who remembered everyone's birthdays, who coached Little League on weekends, who somehow made partner before forty without selling his soul.

We'd met at Columbia Law, four kids from different worlds thrown together in Constitutional Law. Aki—short for Achilles, a name that somehow fit his tendency to charge headfirst into every challenge—came from old Greek money and investment banking. Hailey grew up in foster care in Detroit, earned her way to law school through sheer force of will, and a full scholarship. I was the seminary dropout who'd discovered I preferred arguing about justice in courtrooms rather than from pulpits, though I never quite shook the theological training.

And Leif? Leif was the anchor. The one who kept us together through bar exam stress, career crises, marriages, divorces, and the slow drift that happens when adult life scatters college friends across the country. He hosted our annual reunion weekends, remembered our parents' names, sent care packages when Hailey was working eighteen-hour days as a public defender, and visited when Aki's father died.

Now I'm sitting in this sterile hospital waiting room, watching my best friend since college stare at nothing while machines keep his body alive. The doctors say the brain swelling might go down. Might. That's the best they can give us.

Aki thinks it's his fault somehow. "I should have told him not to drive in that rain," he keeps saying, as if weather patterns respond to investment banker anxiety. He's always been like this—convinced that if he could just work harder, plan better, control more variables, he could protect the people he loves. His nickname came from his professor father's classical obsession, but it stuck because of how he threw himself into battle, whether that was a merger deal or defending a friend's honor.

Hailey, our fourth musketeer from law school, flew in from Seattle with theories about everything – faulty traffic lights, the other driver's blood alcohol, municipal negligence. She needs someone to blame, needs a lawsuit to file, because that's how Hailey processes chaos. Make it logical, make it actionable, make it fixable. Growing up bouncing between homes taught her that the world only makes sense when you can identify the broken system and fight it.

But I'm the one who really screws this up.

"You know," I say on day four, when Leif's been moved out of the ICU but still hasn't woken up, "maybe this is happening for a reason."

Hailey stops mid-pace and stares at me like I've grown a second head. Aki looks up from his vigil by Leif's bedside.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Hailey's voice could cut steel.

"I just... look, Leif's always been kind of obsessed with control, right? Maybe this is the universe telling him to let go a little. Trust in something bigger than himself."

The silence that follows is so complete I can hear the fluorescent lights humming.

"Are you seriously suggesting," Hailey says slowly, "that my friend deserved to lose his wife and children because he was too controlling?"

"That's not what I—"

"Because that's what it sounds like, Phil. It sounds like you're sitting here, looking at Leif hooked up to machines, and thinking, 'Well, this will teach him some humility.'"

Aki stands up, and I can see twenty years of friendship hanging in the balance. "Phil, man, what the hell?"

I backtrack, try to explain what I meant about divine plans and personal growth, but every word I say makes it worse. Hailey starts listing Leif's charitable work, his mentorship of younger lawyers, how he flew to New Orleans three summers running to help rebuild after Katrina. Aki talks about how Leif was the only one who visited him during his divorce, who helped him find a therapist, who never judged.

"He's a good man," Aki says finally. "Maybe the best man I know. So what's your theory about why good men get destroyed while hedge fund assholes buy third homes?"

I don't have an answer for that. I have platitudes about mystery and faith and God's plan, but sitting here looking at Leif's bandaged head, they taste like ash in my mouth.

The truth is, I need this to make sense. I need Leif's suffering to serve some purpose, because if it doesn't – if random tragedy can obliterate a life this good, this carefully built – then what hope do any of us have? What's the point of being decent, of working hard, of loving people if it can all disappear on a rainy Tuesday afternoon?

My seminary training kicks in at the worst moments. I find myself mentally cataloguing theodicies—free will defense, soul-making theodicy, the greater good argument. But they're all just intellectual scaffolding, elaborate explanations that crumble when you're watching your friend's chest rise and fall mechanically, when you know that three blocks away two small coffins are being lowered into the ground.

Hailey's staying at Leif's house now, handling the lawyers and insurance companies, fielding calls from colleagues and clients. She's sleeping in the guest room because she can't bear to go into Leif and Charlene's bedroom, can't look at their photos on the nightstand. She told me yesterday that she threw out all the sympathy casseroles because the smell of tuna noodle makes her want to scream.

"People keep saying they can't imagine," she says on day seven, standing in Leif's kitchen surrounded by legal documents. "But I can imagine. That's the problem. I can imagine exactly how it felt when the car started to skid. I can imagine Charlene reaching back to check on the kids. I can imagine the moment Leif realized he couldn't stop what was happening."

She's lost weight, surviving on coffee and rage. Every morning, she calls the insurance company, the hospital billing department, and the funeral home. Every afternoon, she sits by Leif's bed reading legal briefs aloud, as if the familiar rhythm of contract language might call him back.

Aki has basically moved into the hospital. He brings Leif books and reads to him – legal thrillers, sports magazines, anything. "The doctors say he might be able to hear us," Aki explains, though we all know he's really talking to keep himself sane. He's lost fifteen pounds and developed a twitch in his left eye.

Yesterday I found him in the hospital chapel at 3 AM, not praying exactly, just sitting in the dark. "I keep thinking about probability," he said when I sat down beside him. "The odds of that drunk driver hitting that intersection at that exact moment. The chances of the rain reducing visibility just enough. If Leif had left five minutes later, if he'd taken the highway instead of surface streets..."

"You can't think like that," I tell him, but I know he will anyway. Aki deals with risk assessment for a living; he can't turn off the part of his brain that calculates odds, that believes in the fiction that sufficient analysis can prevent catastrophe.

And I keep coming back, day after day, even though they don't really want me here anymore. I keep thinking I can find the right words, the perfect explanation that will make this bearable for all of us. But every theological framework I try feels like I'm building sandcastles against a tsunami.

I call my old seminary professor, Dr. Hartwell, hoping for wisdom I can pass along. Instead, he tells me about his grandson who died of leukemia at six, how the family's faith both sustained and tortured them.

"The questions don't get easier, Philip," he says. "You just learn to carry them differently."

But I'm not ready to carry questions. I want answers. I want a God who makes sense, who operates according to principles I can understand and defend. I want to be able to tell Aki that his friend's suffering serves a purpose, to assure Hailey that justice exists somewhere beyond the courtroom.

Instead, I watch them love Leif through their own broken ways. Aki researches every experimental treatment, every rehabilitation program, printing out studies and making charts. Hailey has restructured her entire Seattle practice to work remotely, setting up a makeshift office in Leif's study. They don't talk about meaning or purpose. They just show up.

On day ten, I bring my guitar to the hospital. It feels stupid, but I remember how Leif used to love those terrible folk songs I'd play at law school parties. Hailey rolls her eyes when I pull it out, but she doesn't stop me. Aki actually requests "Fire and Rain," which makes me wonder if he's been crying in the chapel more than once.

I'm halfway through "The Weight" by The Band when Leif's fingers twitch. Just slightly, but Aki sees it too.

"Did you see that? His hand moved."

The nurses are skeptical—muscle spasms are common—but we all start talking to him more directly. Hailey abandons the legal briefs and starts telling stories from law school. Aki describes his latest impossible client. I find myself praying out loud for the first time in months, not asking for healing exactly, just acknowledging the mystery of consciousness, the fragile miracle of being present in the world.

On day twelve, Leif opens his eyes.

The doctors call it miraculous, though they're careful to manage our expectations about cognitive function, motor skills, and the long road ahead. But he's awake, he's tracking movement, he can squeeze our hands on command.

Hailey cries for the first time since the accident. Aki laughs through his tears, already making plans for physical therapy, speech therapy, and adaptive technology. They're going to fight for every inch of Leif's recovery, going to love him through whatever comes next.

And me? I'm standing in the corner, realizing I never really understood the story at all.

I thought Job was about why good people suffer. But maybe it's about what happens to the people who love them. About how we choose to show up when everything falls apart, when our explanations fail, when there's nothing left but presence and hope and the radical act of staying.

The first word Leif speaks, three days after waking up, is "Charlene." The second is "kids." When we have to tell him—again—what happened, his face crumbles like a building being demolished in slow motion. But he doesn't ask why. He doesn't demand explanations from God or the universe or anyone else.

He just cries, and we cry with him.

Leif will never be the same. None of us will. The man who could argue constitutional law for hours might struggle to remember words. The father who taught his daughter to ride a bike might need help walking. The husband who planned romantic surprises might not remember falling in love.

But we'll be here. Not because we understand why this happened, not because we've found meaning in the senselessness, but because love doesn't require explanation. It just requires showing up.

Hailey's already researching the best rehabilitation centers. Aki is converting Leif's home office into a ground-floor bedroom. And I'm learning to sit in the silence, to stop trying to fix everything with theology and start trying to help however I can.

Maybe that's enough. Maybe that's everything.

Maybe the point isn't to understand why the storm comes, but to learn how to hold each other when it does.

The weight of why will always be there. But perhaps the weight is meant to be shared.