How can it possibly be 9 years?
And what makes this year harder than the past few?
I can’t explain it, other than to say that we have a spiritual connection to each other, but we all seem to be in a similar place emotionally when it comes to the loss of our son and brother.
This year has been more difficult than the past few, I think in part because the reality can no longer be ignored, distracted from or denied. He really isn’t coming back. I know that has been the reality since that morning 9 years ago. But something in my psyche has refused to give up hope. You know I’m stubborn like that.
This is our “new normal”…. a phrase I have hated so much. Not only must I learn to accept it, but as your dad said in the first month or so after he passed, embrace it. And truth be told, I think we have. We still gather together, talk, laugh, eat, play, work…all the normal things loving families do. But our “new normal” includes something that wasn’t present pre-tragedy. A hole. A sadness. A somberness.
The pre-tragedy grace of our Heavenly Father is still present, too, and to a degree we didn’t know before. So is the peace of God, the presence of His comfort, the joy of His presence. It still remains, as it always will. His love for us is unfathomable, yet we feel it. And we are thankful.
This morning, though, we remember. We allow ourselves to grieve without feeling the pressure from others to move on, get over it, let God heal us, be who we were before, or whatever else others may say. We can be us…. missing one of us.
And we can remind ourselves that this is not the end. This world is not our home. (Though when I was your age(s), it certainly seemed like it.) We were made for another. And as tragic, sad and sometimes debilitating it is to know, our son and brother has gone to our eternal home and is waiting for us with our Father and Savior.
So, not only do we remember and grieve, though not as those who have no hope, but we rejoice that this is the day the Lord has made. He is in this day with us. He was in that day with him. I believe either Jesus, or someone He sent, escorted him to heaven that morning. We lay in our beds, unaware (though soon to be made painfully aware), as our beloved Izzy flew off to heaven to live where “God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.”
I love you all so much, and I’m so proud of how you live your lives, honoring God and your brother with them.
High Flight
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
of sun-split clouds,—and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of—wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air ….
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark nor ever eagle flew—
And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.
My Journey Through 