Tragedy in Poland

Okay, so you know how you watch the James Bond movies,Bourne Trilogy, or the Mission Impossibles and you see foreign diplomats or other important people getting assassinated or dying? Well, have I got a little story for you dear readers!
We received word from the Mayor of Dungarvan upon our return from Barcelona, Spain that there was a terrible plane crash that killed the Polish President, Lech Kaczynski, and several important members of the Cabinet. None of us could believe it.

According to a New York Times online article, the "plane tried to land in a thick fog, missing the runway and snagging treetops about half a mile from the airport in Smolensk, scattering chunks of fuselage across a bare forest...This is a wound that will be very difficult to heal...The crash came as a stunning blow to Poland, wiping out a large portion of the country’s leadership in one fiery explosion. And in a chilling twist, it happened at the moment that Russia and Poland were beginning to come to terms with the killing of more than 20,000 members of Poland’s elite officer corps in the same place 70 years ago...Russian emergency officials said 97 people were killed. They included Poland’s deputy foreign minister and a dozen members of Parliament, the chiefs of the army and the navy, and the president of the national bank. They included Anna Walentynowicz, 80, the former dock worker whose firing in 1980 set off the Solidarity strike that ultimately overthrew Polish Communism, as well as relatives of victims of the massacre that they were on their way to commemorate."
I think that this is one of those times when you hear the news, and you just sit there and say "No. That can't have happened. This has to be a joke." You only say this because you just can't imagine something like that even happening for real. When I heard that, I immediately thought of the people of Poland and what they must be feeling. I can't even imagine the sadness that the families of the dead must be going through now. I won't attempt to go all philosophical and start spewing sentiments on how fragile life is or how important it is to live like you were dying because frankly, it's all been said before. And you are a highly intelligent person, I'm sure that you can come up with your own sentiment :-)