Fourteen Months Later, Japan

Today marks fourteen months since the earthquake in Haiti. And for the second morning, I am immersed in coverage of the earthquake in Japan. This week's Tohoku Quake was seven hundred times more powerful than the one we experienced here in Haiti. I look at the photos and feel completely overwhelmed by the destruction and by the fact that these huge forces are so far beyond human control.

My husband grew up in Japan, and these images are, for him, images of home. In a sense he is experiencing some of what I went through last year when I was evacuated to the United States and was observing from a distance, that helpless feeling that he didn't go through during our disaster because he was actively involved from the first moment in helping to make things better.

Everything I have been thinking about for the past fourteen months feels even truer to me now: life is precious, people are precious, it could all be gone in an instant.