To Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.:

It was 6 a.m. and I was lounging in bed with a fresh-brewed cup of coffee listening to NPR this morning and watching a hawk sit on her nest in a big tree anchored in the center of the field behind my condo.

As the news came over the radio: "Kurt Vonnegut has died," the hawk spread her wings and took to the air.

My hands covered my eyes.

Oh geez, Mr. Vonnegut, how you got me through my high school years. Your sad, mixed up characters were me: Kilgore Trout, Billy Pilgrim, Elliot Rosewater, Montana Wildhack.

When Billy Pilgrim got “Unstuck” in time, so did I. Your stories fit like a missing puzzle piece in the space right between adolescent angst and young adulthood.

Your semi-autobiographical account of life as a prisoner of war during World War II in "Slaughterhouse Five” and the scene that unfolds before the eyes of your character Billy as he is released after the bombing of Dresden is as clear today in my mind as when I first read it.

I heard you in an interview, describing this surreal world where nothing made sense, the bombed city, the animals running free from the Dresden zoo, a young prisoner of war staring at a world gone mad.

The last line of the novel is a bird's nonsensical singing, singing that is posed as a question that to me translates to “What the hell?”

“Poo-te-weet?” it calls.

How fitting for a life-changing story that teaches us how impossible it is to make sense of the insanity of war and massacre. The book came out in 1969, in the midst of the turmoil of the Vietnam War.

Vonnegut’s chirping bird lets us know that sometimes in life it is impossible to even ask questions that make sense.

“What the hell?” is about all you can say.

I loved you so.

God bless you, Kurt Vonnegut. I wonder if today you are wandering in a world that finally makes sense.