Grief and Gratitude
My Dear People,
My brother-in-law asked me to be prepared to step up to the lectern. In case he needed me. That is, in case he couldn't get through the eulogy himself.
(I wondered if I would be able to get through it.)
He got through it. And with grace.
+
My father-in-law died last week, as you may know.
It's still hard to believe, really.
The coffee can with his cigar butts in it is still on our back deck.
+
He was at Fin's baptism on Pentecost.
+
Gratitude and grief. It's not one or the other, but both; and at the same time.
+
I grieve that Gene won't teach his grandsons to fish; that he won't take them to Vermont's fabled Northeast Kingdom, to Lake Seymour, where he was going the day he died. I grieve that I won't get to sit on his front porch with him again, as the sun goes down, looking out into the Green Mountains. And I grieve that my wife grieves; and that her brother grieves; and that her mother grieves.
+
I give thanks that Gene lived as long as he did after his diagnosis with ALS; and I give thanks that he didn't experience the extreme misery of the late stages of that disease. I give thanks that he was at Fin's baptism. I give thanks for the pages and pages of notes I took while he told me stories about his life. I give thanks that he was headed for the Northeast Kingdom on his last day; and I give thanks for his friends Mike and Tom, without whom he would not have been making that trip, and without whom he would not have made many other such trips.
+
Gratitude and grief. Grief and gratitude. It's not one or the other; it's both. This day. And everyday. If we really are to live.
Your brother in Christ,
Wallace+
