Mourning the loss of two of our own

Yesterday, it was sunny and the air had replaced its earlier humidity with the crispness of an oncoming autumn. All across campus, business carried on as usual. The C1 took its usual load of students to and from East and West campuses repetitively. The coffee line in von der Heyden was as long as ever. Squirrels rummaged, oblivious to passerby, through the garbage bins. That Monday afternoon, we learned that two Duke students had died over the weekend. The sun still shone brightly.

In an email to the student body, Vice President of Student Affairs Larry Moneta notified us of the tragic news that two Duke students had passed away in separate and unrelated incidents. Kaila Brown, a fifth year doctoral candidate in English, and Alexander Rickabaugh, a sophomore in the Pratt School of Engineering, left this world too soon. Their sudden and untimely deaths leave us struggling to make sense of of the living in the constant specter of death.

As Duke students, we are all full of hope, promise and ambition. We pass through our days in a haze of caffeine, our heads buzzing with the anticipation of our next challenge, and surrounded by equally gifted students and professors. In the midst of so much talent, it is easy—no, preferable—to forget that quiet tragedy still indiscriminately lurks, hidden. We live blessed lives of academic privilege and achievement. Relatively few of us have run up against something we truly could not conquer through hard work and natural ability.

Yet death strikes those seemingly least deserving and most promising, too frequently. Only last semester, we mourned the death of Rebecca DeNardis. The dull truth of what we wrote in our editorial then then still rings true today: it is difficult to grasp the sudden loss of someone who had such a promising future. How do we continue to hold our heads up and bravely confront the inevitability of happiness and sadness that wait for us each day? Somehow, life still marches on, and the sun still shines.

The small, discrete text of the emails we received Monday afternoon belied the magnitude of the information they contained. Kaila Brown and Alexander Rickabaugh are not just names. They are people, with families, worries, aspirations and who shared in the trials and tribulations of living before death claimed them too soon. They leave those that cared about them struggling, wordlessly, with the indescribable, incomprehensible fact that one day they were here and no longer with us the next.

We extend our heartfelt condolences to the family, friends and other loved ones of Kaila and Alexander. May they rest in peace, and the living make peace with their deaths.