A time to die...

Yesterday, in the early morning, in Los Angeles, my brother Paul died.

Even as I write this it seems unreal and so out of order for the way things should be. And so unfair.

Apparently he, and we, and all of us did not know that his poor heart was fading away even as he seemed to remain so very strong and alive. And while he was talking to his wife on the phone before going off to work it just stopped. Now its our hearts that are broken.

I make no sense of this because in my mind I see none. Nothing about this fits any logic I know and part of me is angry and frustrated in a primal way. I should not be crying with a widow in her early 40's. I should not be trying to help a 12 year old kid make sense of it all. But it is what it is and all hope that this is a bad dream was shattered when I woke up this morning and came to realize that I have been denied the terrible comfort of this all being a nightmare.

Yet I do not fear for his soul as I know he loved the Lord. And even as he will miss in an earthly way all the joys of this life, the graduations, the weddings, the grandchildren, all the things he deserved he will also never grow old, never grow broken and sad and tired as is the lot of all us who remain. Time and its pains have no hold on him anymore, only glory remains and the incredible life of heaven in which we all are what we should be, where we should be, and in the presence of Love in its purest form.

I would be selfish to deny him this.

Yet my pain is so deep that I am nearly unable to function and I cannot imagine that of his wife and children and our mother who now has to face the indescribable task of burying her own child. Faith rises like an instinct and there is a very calm place in the center of things in myself and in all of us despite the intense bitterness of these days but I still hurt in ways I never imagined.

God, the river is deep and cold, the current is swift, and I fear for the crossing. Yet stay with me and I will walk on.