coffee & a glass of red
Sipping a cup of Lucky Goat "lucky 7 espresso" coffee fresh ground in my magic machine, from the bag of beans TJCC gave me last year on my birthday, that sat unopened through HMichael and its year, and also sipping
(yes I know it's neither lunch time nor five o'clock pm anywhere in America, suck it up!) a small glass of Saint Emilion Grand Cru, a French red Ray gave me for this year's birthday, and munching on a pecan pie cupcake Linda made from Judy's recipe, I am sitting here in life with heart and mind where no one should have to be, but where life has held me captive since the desolating news came Tuesday morning
and where life will begin again fresh and anew every morning for the rest of life for Richard's parents. Pain that one can live into because there is no other way to honor him, and that one will by experience learn to know as a dark new companion, but that one can never get over. It's the way it is for a parent.
Indeed, as a priest I know better than to personalize this, but I remember the wee hours of that morning last May, 2018, chasing the screaming ambulance carrying my First and Oldest to Pensacola for emergency brain surgery, thinking, knowing, telling Linda sitting beside me, "If I lose this child, I will no longer know who I am". It didn't happen, I didn't lose her, at least not that way, so I didn't come to that place that every loving parent fears more than everything else that life can bring. But as priest and pastor, I have been there with parents any number of times. Once carried down the aisle the tiny pink casket of a full term then suddenly and unexpectedly stillborn tiny girl whom, together with parents, closest friends and delivering physician and nurses, there in delivery, directly Evelyn was born, we baptized her into the kingdom of heaven. "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you" says the Lord. (Jeremiah 1:4).
Two young men who had taken their own lives by gunshot. A young daughter in a boat crash. The cries of oh my God oh my God oh my God and only silence from heaven.
The coffee and cupcake are delicious. The drop of red wine is as red as the Blood of Christ, the Cup of Salvation. The pain is indescribable.
T
(yes I know it's neither lunch time nor five o'clock pm anywhere in America, suck it up!) a small glass of Saint Emilion Grand Cru, a French red Ray gave me for this year's birthday, and munching on a pecan pie cupcake Linda made from Judy's recipe, I am sitting here in life with heart and mind where no one should have to be, but where life has held me captive since the desolating news came Tuesday morning
and where life will begin again fresh and anew every morning for the rest of life for Richard's parents. Pain that one can live into because there is no other way to honor him, and that one will by experience learn to know as a dark new companion, but that one can never get over. It's the way it is for a parent.
Indeed, as a priest I know better than to personalize this, but I remember the wee hours of that morning last May, 2018, chasing the screaming ambulance carrying my First and Oldest to Pensacola for emergency brain surgery, thinking, knowing, telling Linda sitting beside me, "If I lose this child, I will no longer know who I am". It didn't happen, I didn't lose her, at least not that way, so I didn't come to that place that every loving parent fears more than everything else that life can bring. But as priest and pastor, I have been there with parents any number of times. Once carried down the aisle the tiny pink casket of a full term then suddenly and unexpectedly stillborn tiny girl whom, together with parents, closest friends and delivering physician and nurses, there in delivery, directly Evelyn was born, we baptized her into the kingdom of heaven. "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you" says the Lord. (Jeremiah 1:4).
Two young men who had taken their own lives by gunshot. A young daughter in a boat crash. The cries of oh my God oh my God oh my God and only silence from heaven.
The coffee and cupcake are delicious. The drop of red wine is as red as the Blood of Christ, the Cup of Salvation. The pain is indescribable.
T