Yet another loss

Note: This is decidedly not the final text concerning our USA trip, although the event referred to in the following blog entry occurred four days away from our scheduled flight home.

This was going to be a happy, carefree 'reunion' with Nancy, the likeable and lovely American lady who stayed at our house two yars ago. Instead this Monday evening, July 13, found our entire family group huddled up on her lawn, children and adults embracing eachother, tears pouring uncontrollably down our faces.

We aldready had learned that my father-in-law had been taken ill earlier in the day. The information had come to my wife as we were preparing to go down and share breakfast with our host David. But we were more or less in the dark as to how serious his condition was. So we weren't at all expecting to receive the news that he had died at some unspecified time in the afternoon in the hospital in Arendal, in the south of Norway, due to a blood clot in one of his lungs fatally severing the necessary flow of this vital fluid to his heart.

My father-in-law was 77 years old when death came to take him to a far better location. His final years were marred by gradually failing health, in most part because Parkinson's disease relentlessly ate away at his muscular strength. Medication saw to it that his decline wasn't a steep and rocky downhill ride, but we had all observed and received reports on how this tireless worker no longer could cope with his ususal load of small outdoor and indoor pet projects.

THREE DEATHS WITHIN TEN MONTHS

For the third time in less than ten months I and my family had to prepare for the ritual goodbye to someone we had known and loved. My father had previously succumbed to cancer on September 18, 2008. In February of 2009, the sixteen year-old son of a dear friend in our cell-group had collapsed and died while on an mountain excursion with his class. And now, not quite six months after that blow, we all had to face up to the brutally intrusive, heart-rending sting resulting from yet another loss.

In all three cases, we are convinced that the deceased have exited this physical world, transitting to an existence we cannot fathom or probe.That certainly is a positive factor in the long journey called grieving, but their gain is for a long time still our loss. Birthdays, anniversaries, holiday seasons, vacations, family reunions will all have to take place with a key person in our lives missing. And with two grandparents now absent, our list of senior family members is certainly growing alarmingly short.

IN NEED OF SOMEONE WISER

In not a foreigner to change, and I do not always resent it. But I've discerned lately a growing need in my life for the continued presence of the wizened - but wiser still, those who have aged beyond my years but have not stalled along the way or lost their appetites for the trivialities that spice up our shared lives. I don't need a daddy to monitor my every move and decision, but inside I'm longing, yearning, for the availability and company of one of the 'Fathers and Mothers in the Land'.

And since I know Someone who can provide, I'm keenly hoping for that wish to materialize.