In the last 2 weeks I've had 2 close friends lose their dads. One was expected, one was a surprise. Before last Saturday, it had been a long time since I'd been to a funeral. I feel like I am much too young to enter the phase of life where my friends start losing parents. I remember a few years out of college, when my friends started getting married. It felt like we were playing dress-ups. Then they started having babies, and it seemed like something my sister and her friends did, not my friends. Then one of my best friends had a miscarriage, and others I love struggled with infertility, and I couldn't comprehend that I was old enough to have loved ones dealing with this type of pain--grown up pain. And now, a new, huge version of grown up pain.
My dad asked me today whether our attempts to defy death aren't in reality a lack of faith of something better waiting for us, and I haven't been able to stop thinking about that. Because I do have faith in something better, in life after this, in eternal families. I guess it comes down to selfishness on the part of those of us left behind. Jenni will have a wedding without her dad, and Lance and Jamee's baby won't know her grandpa. I think of the examples of my dad and grandpas, and the wisdom they have passed on, and the love they have shared, and I ache for the huge hole that they would leave were they not here.
Jenni, Lance, Jame--I love you!
