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I have heard that rather strange observation all of my life.
It was the voice of a belief
that if one person dies in a small town, three will die.
This saying has been passed on from generation to
generation. I heard it then; I hear it now.
I guess this statement is
true enough if we wait long enough. Sooner or later, three
people are going to die. I have never figured out what
boundaries of time or geography are applied to his rule.
People die. We are told that
people die in threes. We lose good folks and then just as we
have done for generations, we gather close. We share the
pain while celebrating the life of the deceased. We realize
that each person who comes into our lives is a miracle. We
share a collective memory. We care deeply and we grieve
deeply. We are bound by a shared emptiness.
Three people have died. All
three were what would be considered local folks. Three
people known well to my family. They left us in a moment,
but we have known them for years. Yes, we know the
departed. We know their family members??”both the living and
the dead.
We cry. We laugh to keep
from crying more. We know what to do. We are fish that
have swum in these waters before.
My favorite song is ???What a
Wonderful World??? by Louie Armstrong. I listen to it often
during times of stress. I listen to it after a messenger
brings the news of a death of a friend or loved one. The
song brings hope. It brings strength. It brings tears.
A fellow by name of Pericles
once said, ???What you leave behind is not what is engraved in
stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.
??? Pericles must have lived in a small town. It is
difficult to live in a small town for very long without
having your life entwined with the lives of others. The
life of a man or a woman impacts others and so does the
death of that individual.
We circle the wagons and
find strength in the faces of the familiar.
In an effort to sort things
out, we look to the sky as though there might be an answer
there. We see a thousand tiny stars blinking above us. We
cannot be sure, but it appears that three of them are
shining brighter than the others.
We wonder why we need to
suffer a loss, but we don??™t question God??™s wisdom. That??™s
not our style. We know there is a purpose to all things.
There is an old joke that
tells of the widow, Betty. She was telling her friend of
the death of her long-time husband, Fred.
???He went out to the garden.
Fred liked his garden. He bent over to cut
some lettuce and pull some carrots for dinner when he
dropped dead right on the spot from a heart attack.???
???What did you do???? asked her friend.
???Oh,
I had some frozen peas instead.???
We each deal with grief in
our own way.
We hug one another. We
don??™t want to let go for fear of losing someone else.
We say the things we feel.
The words fall short. They are never enough. There never
seems to be the right words to express what we feel.
I listen to a beautiful
voice at a funeral sing about coming to the garden alone.
The song never fails to bring a lump to my throat and a tear
to my eye. I have listened to that same song at so many
funerals.
Faith, friends and a
favorite hymn help us get through this. Dorothy was right;
there is no place like home--home and the friends who were
made there. Her friend, the Wizard of Oz said, ???A heart is
not judged by how much it loves, but how much it is loved by
others.??? We draw together to demonstrate love. We make it
through until tomorrow because we have good friends today.
The memories of the dearly
departed are indeed the wind beneath our wings. We gain
strength from their goodness. We stand tall on the
shoulders of those who go on before us. We remember the
beautiful moments. We mourn soulfully over our losses. We
absorb the pain.
Three people have died.
There is a sadness that we
think will never leave.
Then we see a baby??™s smile.
?©Al
Batt 2003
71622 325 St.
Hartland, MN 56042
SnoEowl @ aol.com |
