So, one of the blogs I read has asked the bloggers she reads for updates. Ha. I think that’s Very Funny, given that her last post sat there for Almost A Month.
(Do you know who you are?)
I have a lot I could write about. For example, there’s this:
Emma Grace, out of bed because she’s realized (untimely) after being tucked in that she’d be better off if she finished her dinner after all. Happily for her, it’s still in the refrigerator, so we heat it up, and she eats it.
But while she’s waiting to eat, she sits next to me on the sofa and informs me,
“My ears are telling me they are ready to be pierced.”
“Oh?” I say.
“Yes, they say they are really ready to be pierced now.”
And I am amused by this, and am preparing my response when she says, “Just kidding.”
Or I could tell you about William’s baseball game last night, and how well he plays shortstop, and how he caught the line drive to end the game, and how the coach gave him the ball because he played So Well, and how humble and pleased he is about it all.
And I could tell you about Everett being happy to play Nintendo, and how, when his screen time was over today, he asked me Five Different Times if he could play Nintendo tomorrow, because it is Just So Fun, and because he’s too excited about playing Nintendo to ever listen to me answering his question.
But instead I will tell you that the entire time I was on Long Island this weekend for my uncle’s memorial service, I kept expecting him to come into the room from outdoors or upstairs. And when I heard my cousin laugh outside, it sounded like my uncle’s laugh. And when I looked at my second cousin’s baby photo, it looked like my uncle’s baby photo.
My mind could not seize on the reality that my uncle is, really and truly, gone.
“This is when we know that Death is the enemy,” my aunt said, and she is right.
Yes, I spent my weekend on Long Island, in and among the beautiful places that are the dearest to me in the world, and all weekend I was standing on the lip of death’s abyss, peering carefully down into the void. Everyone dies, you know. Every, every, everyone.
The loss — current and potential — is devastating.
I know we are to be building the Kingdom, and by faith this is what I hope I am, indeed, doing. But on days like these days, the mourning seems right, too, and the longing for Someplace Other, Someplace where profound and appalling loss is Not right around the corner. Someplace Safe.
