I had a friend who died this week. Many of you didn’t know her and that’s okay. I don’t really need to go into those details.
What’s important is that she made a difference to the people that she met, helped, loved and took care of.
My friend always had a smile and a hug for me no matter what was going on in her life and there was a lot going on. Like many of us, she dealt with health issues, money issues, work issues and never-getting-enough-rest issues. But she always had time to give a hug and a kind word.
When she died on Wednesday my family and friends were obviously sad when they heard the news. I was too but I also found myself happy for her in a way because I knew she was tired. She was ready.
I think sometimes we don’t realize that. Of course we’re sad because we are going to miss having that person in our life. We won’t see him/her and hear that laugh or feel that hug. But sometimes I think we need to ask, “What would they want?” When I think about how she faced a health challenge and how she had always been busy rushing from one responsibility to another, I found myself thinking, “Now you can rest. “
My friend lost her husband to cancer about 15 years ago. He was the love of her life and I think she was lost without him…but she carried on. She saw her two boys grow into wonderful men who had their own issues to deal with but they came through just fine. Her grandchild became sick with leukemia but she prayed and prayed and got us all to pray too….and he pulled through! He’s healthy and rambunctious now just like a two year old should be. She saw that they were okay. Her work here was done.
I know you could say that she had so much more to do and so much more love to give but maybe she thought she had done all that she could. We don’t know what another person is really dealing with, the pain or the loneliness. That’s between her and God. I have to believe that at some point God says, “It’s okay to come home; you’ve done enough.”
What’s that saying about the “life in your years?” Abraham Lincoln is quoted as saying, “And in the end it’s not the years in your life that count; it’s the life in your years. ” What did you do with the time that you had?
A few years ago my wife’s aunt died tragically and she asked our minister something that we have probably all wondered at one point: “Why does God let bad things happen to good people?” We have always remembered Rev. Earl Miller’s response: “Bad things happen to bad people all the time it’s just that nobody notices.”
So yes, we cry because she’s gone but we can also be grateful because we got to be a part of the life she lived! I will always see that big smile when I think of her and the hugs that were always there.
Rest now my friend. And as they say at some funerals, “We’ll take it from here.”
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