Life is short. PinF walked Sophie into her last day of school today. Third grade is over already, and with it goes another year of my life too. Still, I recognize this and try to live in the moment as I'm ever so aware that "moment" is usually the one we all take granted. For her part Sophia is oblivious to the days, months and years not to mention the significance of moving on to yet another grade, another teacher, and another year.
Last Friday I walked out of the office full of anticipation of the three-day holiday weekend. I shared plans with workmates, and wished those I knew a safe holiday. I said good-bye to one chap in particular and walked out into the balmy sunny day of south Florida eager to get my weekend going. I walked into the office Tuesday morning exhausted yet refreshed, sunburned yet relaxed.
I could sense it immediately, faces didn't look right, moods were off, and greetings weren't too cheery. I got the news that one of my workmates, one whom I had said goodbye only 72 hours before had died. Twenty-nine years old and full life, a mountain of man-- 6 5" the source of eternal pride to his parents, both immigrants from Jamaica. Seems he had minor knee surgery, developed a blood clot and died. Here was someone I laughed with everyday, counseled when his heart was broken over a girlfriend, and man who hugged me with those huge arms when I returned from my father's funeral.
He was what all parents can only hope to raise--a sincerely gentle man, full of empathy, smiles, and caring for his fellow man. Now he was gone and people all around me were struggling to both comprehend and make sense of such a loss. We're all losing something everyday, I know I've lost alot of what I had a few years ago. Today I lost a little more of my daughter's childhood and a good friend.
I went to the viewing fully prepared to be unprepared for the range of emotions I would experience both in me and around me. He lay in his casket as if he were no more than asleep. Beside him were his two outstanding parents and his kid brother. gathered around them were relatives from Jamaica. I knelt down and said a prayer, stood up and told his father I needed to tell him some things. His father was as big, and as gentle as the son. His face showed the difference in age and experience, still I relaized had it not been for his death I was essentially looking at my friend 25 years in the future.
I told his father that in all my years I had never met a man who spoke so lovingly, so often, and so proudly of his parents, and that if their son did nothing else during his time on this earth, he surely loved his parents to an incedible degree. The tears flowed slowly and steadily as his father shared memories that only a grieving parent can. His son, no less than three feet away lay so serenely, it was if I expected him to get up out of that box and join the conversation. The father gave me a giant bear hug just like the son had when I arrived home shattered from my loss. We cried a little, laughed a lot, and ruminated on what it was that made his son so full of love--for life, self, and others. I was so in the moment as I watched the range of emotions wash over this man's face. His giant hands on my shoulder, speaking in his patois laden lilt of the love for his son, and the fact that he was given a twenty-nine year gift, and that he knew early on that we have but two duties-- to come, and then to return. He said that his son had returned and he knew he would too one day, and that they all would be together again.
I had a similar chat with his mother, not nearly the physical stature of either the son or father, but a giant in her right. Stoicly telling me that her son was more son than she could have ever prayed for and how the love she felt for him was what was getting her through this, her most painful moment in life. she spoke of his kid brother as we both glanced at the towering 6 5" 18 year old brother, his last day of school was last week when he graduated high school. how things had changed in one week from the highs of her younger son's triumph to the low of her older son's loss. She hugged me close, thanked me, and I again told him of how so many chats of ours included the glowing referances to his mother, her firmness in raising him, and how he placed her on a pedestal. Clearly she needed no one to tell her how much her son was loved---it was more a measure of who he was to tell each of them how much he loved them
June 1st 2007. I held the little hand of my future in the morning and the big hand of my friend, now becoming my past-- in the afternoon. Life is indeed short, and indeed unscripted, and unedited, and it can seem awfully painful and unfair at times.
