Happy Birthday...Sleep Well

Dedicated to his best friend Mugabe

I really wanted to entitle this piece, “Happy Birthday and R.I.P.” but I suppose those final words (R.I.P.) are so piercing that people readily expect just a sad, devastating, heart wrenching story and maybe rightly so. My conscious effort for this post is to simply share more about how my own life was impacted by his life and death. When we allow our lives to be positively transformed by a loved one we have lost we let their legacy live on!

Confessedly, I cannot write without thinking about his family and other friends who suffered through the anniversary of his death only a few weeks later that same month to celebrate what was the day of his birth! Though I will speak of him I will not give him a name because I believe it frees you to consider as you read, your own loved ones who have transitioned and the real impact their lives have had on this world and more importantly, on you.

Reminiscing

Once January rolled in I found myself anticipating those two memorial days I mentioned earlier and wondering how his best friend, who became a dear friend of mine, along with other loved ones, would be coping.  I hadn’t known him long but in the breadth of my knowledge of him I learned of his jovial, compassionate, generous, well-mannered nature. He was a Christian who was a hero. He died because he risked his life to save a classmate who got into difficulty swimming in high current water. I had to take a moment to absorb all that again!

As I observe this scene of my life I recognize that many young people were in it. People, I had not known prior to his death but who in a circle, lit candles with us in what was a somber moment in one of our student council meetings held in a little classroom at our all girls high school. We sang through our pain, sobered up by the thought that young people could also die; that death was not just for the old or the ill. I shake my head as I consider some of the things I believed as a 16 year old, as young people we are always so apt to believe that we are untouchable…invincible!  

Side note: Little did we know as a group of hurting kids that in this very moment God had orchestrated a collective bonding that would be the catalyst for our individual healing.
Some of those faces distorted from crying, hands fastened in another’s hand, singing ‘til we meet again’, I will never forget. Many of them I stayed acquainted with years later and one in particular, his best friend, was to remain rooted in the very soil of my life even to this day! 

Relationships

We expel so much energy in our quest to form connections with people and in our chasing after all kinds of relationships that sometimes do us more harm than good. Please note that I am not devaluing the deliberate efforts one must sometimes make to build bonds but how much more powerful is a bond created by God himself while you were still sleeping (smile). I am sure you have friends and family like that where you feel as though you have always known them or that they understand you like no other etc. I know you do! 

God in His infinite power and wisdom has a way of simply taking strangers and forging a bond between them that seemed to have existed before their time. I knew him well even though I had seen him alive only twice. I knew him well even though he had been introduced in to the script of my life only about 4 months before his death. I knew him well. I never mentioned this earlier but at the time of his death he had been dating one of my closest friends in school. I knew him well. Every experience with him present has been etched in the memory halls of my life! 

I remember his death was a very challenging period of my life but also a very revealing time. I learned what it meant to be a friend, especially to someone new. I learned that God had made the human spirit resilient. I recognized my fears, inadequacies and limitations. I met God in a new way. I learned to pray. I learned to appreciate God and all He had been doing in my life! It marked entry into a new sphere of my journey with God as He comforted, renewed and restored me. 

Ahhh! Writing now has made me realize even more the wealth and depth of my experiences during this short act in my life. Wow there are so many stories behind all these words that have stayed with me over the years and to really talk about them would take post after post after post after post (smile)!

Yes you have lost.

Yes your heart still aches.

But what an awesome experience it was to have that loved one in your life!

Reflection

What could you learn from their life?

What personal attributes might you take from their lives to make you stronger and better today?

How might you celebrate them rather than mourn them? 

I am still asking myself some of these questions and one thing I have learned through my reflections is that the God of love does not want us to stay in pain and grief and even in the midst of it all He still understands our hurt. 

To my friend, you touched many lives in your living and even more in your dying. Gone but never forgotten… 

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Until next time,

EJ
Onward & Live IN purpose