LOSS

I traveled the past 3 weekends. 3 weeks ago I was in LA for a wedding. The week of the wedding my friend, Dan, died in Switzerland while on tour. He was swimming in a lake and his friends lost sight of him. The next time he was seen was floating in 3 feet of water. . .Dan left behind a 2-year-old daughter and a wife. She is distraught and numb. The daughter will never remember him as memory sets in around 4 or 5 years of age. We made a scrap book of messages so she can later read about what kind of man Dan was.

Dan was in the same group of friends as the wedding friends. So the wedding was . . . Bittersweet.

Then 3 pastors were in a bus accident in Korea. 2 died and one was in critical condition.

My brother’s good frat brother died from a battle with liver cancer quite suddenly and quickly.

I could go on, but you get the point.

The next weekend we met in NYC for the funeral. I was honored to be asked to sing and play at the wedding by his wife. I loved Dan, great human behind. His own funeral was filled with a few of his songs, some of his poetry, and one video he put together. Still creating even after passing. . .



These two trips were the first time I had traveled around since returning to the States from South Africa. We realized we didn’t want to wait for the next wedding. . . Plus there were only two of us left in the group and they didn’t see any hope for either Bryan or myself. Ha ha! And we were too young to start the funeral cycle, so we decided to meet just to meet. So some of us met last weekend in Philly, those of us in the East coast. It was nice. I was a 10th wheel - 3 husbands, 3 wives, 4 2-year-olds (I was one of them). Good time. We saw Ving Rhames in our restaurant with a pretty lady.

There’s been other loss. One friend in my program saw her engagement end. It was really sad. She was actually planning it. A date had been set. She even invited me to go to a dance lesson when her fiancé wasn’t going to go. But she was finally able to get him to go to the ballroom dancing lessons. And then boom, he ends it. She’s been through a lot, and I was glad to be able to talk to her about it a bit. It completely changed her life and life direction as she was probably going to leave the program and move to the Middle East.

I know of another friend whose engagement ended (male). But this friend had such a good relationship where his fiancée encouraged and pushed and supported every bit of God in him even if it was to her detriment, no matter if it would take him away from her for a period, etc. Because of that, contrastingly, nothing changed for him after the engagement ended. His plans are still the same. How strangely bitter sweetly beautiful is that? It was the firs time that anyone had ever loved him in a romantic context.