Requiem

The leaves are all falling from the trees around us. The glorious burst of vibrant color is fading to the bare black branches and the early dark and shadow of short days mirror our hearts. November seems to bring some herald of sorrow these past few years.

A friend of ours passed away this week. He was just 32 years old and a father of five. He fought a deadly, aggressive cancer heroically. I have no doubt he is in heaven, for all knew him to be a great man. My heart is shattered for his family, his wife, his children, his parents, and his siblings.

The heart cannot comprehend such loss which is why I think grief is felt so bone deep. The ache you feel in your chest is the body and mind struggling with each other to make some sense of it all. The mind says there was a reason, there is reason for everything. But your heart starts to leak from your eyes and reason ceases to exist. There is only sorrow.

This grief cuts deep as this month is also the anniversary of the death of another young father, a co-worker of Chris’s, who passed away in a car accident. He too was a wonderful human being and we still feel his loss deeply. My daughter A just made a drawing of him to put up in church for All Souls Day, all her own idea. My son is asking to write a letter to the daughters of our friend who died this week to tell them how sorry he is for them, in particular he wants to write out the poem he is memorizing for school, “O Captain, My Captain!”, for he said he thought it might help them in some way. Their hearts inspire me to not cowardly push away this grief, but to embrace it, let it come in and stay.

With this season of Thanksgiving tangled in this season of sorrow and loss I am grateful for every single breath. For as we know Life is so utterly fragile. We might be gone with the next leaf that drops from the trees, or worse, someone we love might have said their last words to us on their way out the door.

My heart is heavy while I focus on each day but I also feel gratitude for having known these men who have touched so many lives. In a world with so few good men, the loss of these men is so bitter. But we walk on, stumbling and sorrowful, we walk on.

Blessed repose and eternal memory. 

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