Do you ever wonder about people sometimes?  People that you don’t know but that you see every day?  I do.  I wonder about the strangers that I pass on the street and the woman that I see in line all the time at Starbucks.  I wonder about their life…I wonder about their story.  Sometimes, we’re so much like ships in the night; passing each other by with no knowledge of where we’re going or where we’ve been.  But I wonder.  Often.

Later on this week, our friends are going to bury their son.  Just seeing the words on the screen makes something inside of me physically hurt.  They all woke up on a seemingly ordinary morning and went to bed having lived through the worst day of their lives.  Their baby boy is gone.  Their little sixteen month old son died.  And I just can’t make sense of it.  I can’t even begin to fathom the kind of agony and sorrow that they are living through right now.

It makes me wonder about the world…how we manage to live in it without the pain eating us alive.  And I can only assume that it’s because it’s all part of the story…part of our story.  One page after another plays out throughout the course of our lives, but eventually, every chapter comes to an end.  Hopefully that means the pain comes to an end as well.  Or at least becomes easier to live through.

It’s going to take my friends and I a long time before we feel remnants of our normal selves again, but this week – in one way or another – we’re all saying goodbye.  We’re all becoming part of the story that was the life and loss of a beautiful child.  Our pain, of course, is nothing compared to what the two people at the heart of this ordeal are about to embark on.  Their chapter as grieving parents is only just beginning and in turn, the story of their life has forever changed.  In a few days they have to do the most unnatural and unfair thing that any human being could ever have to do…they have to bury their baby.

I’ve spent a lot of time this week thinking about the depths of such tragedy…wondering how our aching souls ever manage to cope.  I guess we just pray that the pages keep flipping…that the story doesn’t end here.  I have to believe that the darkness won’t remain forever…despite how we all feel right now.

Andrea and David, I wish we could express the immensity of our love for you.  Furthermore, I wish that our love was enough.  I wish it was enough to bring your little boy back…or to even give you one more day.  I wish it was enough to take your tears away or to make breathing a bit easier.  But I know that it’s not.  I do hope though that it helps to carry you…that it helps to remind you that you’re not alone in this time of deep sorrow…because while heaven has just gained the most precious of angels…we are here to help you endure the goodbye…

We love you…always…