C'est La Vie
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What a beautiful piece of heartache this has all turned out to be. Lord knows we've learned the hard way all about healthy apathy. And I use these words pretty loosely. There's so much more to life than words..
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Wednesday, January 05, 2005
As I was driving down to see Aleks and her family on Sunday evening, I called Ash again since we'd been playing phone tag since a little while before Christmas. He picked up, or maybe he called me back quickly -- that part is something of a blur to me now. At any rate, we finally got to talk. Ash is one of my closest friends ever, very dear to me, and his extended group of friends (especially his girlfriend, Stephanie) are dear to me as well. I miss them all. I have a picture of Stephanie on my phone from when Ash and I went on a shopping trip for her in the kid's section ('cause she's so tiny) of Target, which makes me laugh every time I look at it. Such a quirky pair, she so full of life and humor, and he a little darker yet incredibly caring.
Shortly after I first met Ash not even a year ago, he was coming to my apartment to pick up one of the bazillion extra tables I'd acquired somehow. He brought with him Breon and, I think, Dugger. Perhaps it was one of the other guys. At any rate, that's when I first met Breon .. tall, football-tackler big, with something of a short afro framing his face. Bre told me sometime later that he only had one lung, since the other had been removed due to cancer. We had a great relationship, I felt, a very playful, fun friendship that included some particular conversations on levels not usually found. For example, there's no one quite like someone who has only one lung to talk with about breathing trouble. Or someone who has had cancer with whom you can talk about death and its finer points. His cancer came back shortly before I left for bootcamp. He spent a few days in the hospital getting treatments and then a few days in an apartment in Charlottesville recovering. I didn't make it up to see him there, though we did talk on the phone a couple of times. He was back by the time I was going to be able to make the one hour drive, so we had lots of quality time, his newly-shaven self and I. I saw him a couple of times, too, while I was home on leave. And we talked once or twice after I got down here. Ash told me during our conversation on Sunday that Bre's other lung was having complications, so he had been hospitalized. Soon after, he developed pnuemonia. And on Wednesday, December 29th, he passed away. I didn't quite cry that night, when Ash told me, mostly because I was on a very dangerous stretch of I-95 through South FL, and we talked about some great times with Bre that made me laugh instead. But when I was driving home Monday evening, I was thinking about the funeral that would take place Tuesday in Lynchburg. The funeral that I could not attend, the friend I had not been able to see during his last two months or that final week in the hospital. The friend I had not been able to say goodbye to. I pictured him, then, in a coffin. I pictured Ash and the guys around his grave. And I cried then. And I have cried a few times since. I was not as close to Bre as the Halo-guys were. (Although it seems almost every guy I know plays Halo, and many in large groups, this was the group that introduced me to it in person.. the group on whose TVs I first watched the game played. Rare was the night we were all hanging out at Ash's and there wasn't a game of Halo at some point. So, to me, these are the Halo-guys.) They had known him for years and they all had that male-bonding thing I could never be a part of. But he was, as he liked to be called, my "Big, Black Teddy Bear". He was my Bre, the chubby-cheeked smiley guy who could do something silley to playfully aggrivate me, and then beg me not to take out his other lung. "I've only got one!" he'd say, and we'd verbally spar in the sense of trash talk and silleyness. And then I'd sit on the couch between him and Ash and Stephanie and we'd all watch a movie together, and he'd tell all the Halo-guys that I was his girl. "Don't mess with her," he'd warn. "She's my girl!" And I would ask him how much of a threat that was from a kid with one lung. I knew.. we all knew that he was sick. And that it had been getting worse again. Ash's brother, Freeman, had given Bre a large quantity of Jones Soda for Christmas. (I was trying to remember the other day -- I think that the guys already loved Jones before I met them, which was one of the reasons we hit it off so well. But, since I've been such a spreader of the joy that is Jones Soda for so long, getting plenty of friends - old and new alike - hooked on the colorful substances within the classy and changing bottles, it's possible they heard about it through me and were wise enough to listen. I'm pretty sure, though, that they were already fans.) Apparently, Bre's last day included a request to his father to bring all the Jones to him at the hospital, and then he dropped all the sour patch kids and other such candy he'd received into the sodas, and drank them all in one day. What a way to go. I love my Jones, but I'm pretty sure I'd only drink that many of them when I was preparing to leave this world, too. Bre, I miss you. I missed you since I moved away, since I left for bootcamp and again since I got here. And now I miss you even more, knowing when I go back to the Burg, you won't be there in person. I'll bring flowers to your gravesite, and we'll drink some Jones in your honor. And as Ash suggested, every December 29th we'll have a Bre memorial party in which we all drink lots of Jones Soda and eat lots of candy.
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Hippie: (after hearing Max wants to avoid the draft)You still have options man. "So how do i do normal "It's been known for a train to jump its track. It's ok, so you'll know, most times they come back. It's ok to lose your life, when you finally see your birth. It's ok to say, "I love you," and figure sometimes it's gonna hurt. "As a comedian, you have to start the show strong and you have end the show strong. Those are the two key elements. You can't be like pancakes, all exciting at first, but then by the end you're sick of 'em!" "Hey, this is weird! I ordered one frozen yogurt and they gave me two. You don't happen to like frozen yogurt, do you?" "I love it!" "You're kidding! What a crazy random happenstance!" "Only one more trip," said a gallant seaman, "It was Flannery O'Connor who said that 'grace must wound before it heals.' Her words help me to separate what is most true about life from the things we want to be true. We want life to be painless. True grace is a hard sell because in order for the human heart to understand forgiveness and love, it must first experience darkness and isolation. A life lived under the rule of grace is a life of need which allows us to receive an appreciate the gift of the giver of grace. This is why we will always have the poor with us; this is why God will not allow us to ignore injustice; this is why we are called to a life we cannot handle alone, which can and will break us in the effort to live it -- because grace must wound before it heals." Regarding 2007: Should auld acquaintance be forgot, I thought Christmas Day would never come. But it's here at last, so Mom and Dad, the waiting's finally done. And you gotta get up, you gotta get up, you gotta get up, it's Christmas morning. O little town of Bethlehem, Walk humbly, son Strings of lights above the bed "In a little while I'll feel better "Please tell me once again that You love me. That You love me. Please tell me once again that I matter to You and You really care. Please tell me once again that You're with me, forever. It's not that I could ever doubt you, I just love the way it sounds. I just love the way it sounds." "Every once in a while, a bannerzen posts." "7:30. What kind of people have to be at work at 7:30?" have you seen my love Traveling is significant because it takes so much effort. Either you're going to some place you love, or you're leaving some place you love. Usually it's both. I think I have Bond's ability to get into trouble but not his ability to get out of it. Someday I'll be in some foreign country with 5 thugs with automatic rifles pointed at me, and I'll just.... fart "You had no alternative .. We must work in the world. The world is thus." --- "No .. Thus have we made the world." The summer ends and we wonder where we are And there you go, my friends, with your boxes in your car And you both look so young And last night was hard, you said You packed up every room And then you cried and went to bed But today you closed the door and said "We have to get a move on. It's just that time of year when we push ourselves ahead, We push ourselves ahead." Looking out the bedroom at this snowy TV.. ever since commencement, no one's asking 'bout me. But I bet before the night falls, I could catch the late bus.. take small provisions and this Beethoven bust. I could find work in the outskirts of the city, eat some fish on the way.. befriend an old dog for a roadside pal, find a nice couch to stay -- a pull-out sofa, if you please!" Ooh! Get me away from here I'm dying "The trouble with folks like Brownie is they hold their life in like a bakebean fart at a Baptist cookout and only let it slip out sideways a little at a time when they think there's nobody noticing. Now that's the last thing on earth the Almighty intended. He intended all the life a man's got inside him, he should live it out just as free and strong and natural as a bird." "Life is a phantasmagoria .. It is a pell-mell of confused and tumultuous scenes. We try in vain to find a purpose - to bring an order, a unity to life. I suppose that is the appeal of art. Art is the blending of the real and the unreal, the conquering of nature. It is real enough for it to reflect life, but has the unity that life lacks." "in time memories fade. I've always had this feeling about Patty that she's complex and intriguing...I like Patty alot. She's got a good heart and tells terrible squirrel jokes. "Try to remember that world-weariness isn't necessarily a bad thing. In the book of Mark, I think its Mark, Jesus looks at a blind man and sighs. Jesus sighed before even telling the man he would be healed. He sighed, and I'm not sure that there's a much more human expression of frustration than this. Faced with the horrid picture of a cursed earth and looking into the white eyes of a man blind from the day he was born, He sighed. The Creator of the universe in human form was sad "of the evils of this world," the world He created. Your Creator sighed for you in the same way before He healed you and made you His." After the last secret's told After the last bullet tears through flesh and bone After the last child starves And the last girl walks the boulevard After the last year that's just too hard There is love -- Andrew Peterson, After the Last Tear Falls "when you most need people, you don't need perfection - just to know someone gives a damn" "A CALL TO ACTION: "My brother's always [telling me], 'You should be more mysterious--boys like that.' But I'm not good at that. It would just make me more uncomfortable." "Loners want to kill you, but not for any particular reason, and they'd probably like you if they weren't being guided by the violent voices in their head." "No one wants to oil a snake these days!"
-- Her mom: "We're all safe." -- Jamie Bevill and her mother during Christmas-Decorating dinner, December 20, 2002 i'd throw out all my shoes i'd set up cans for friends to dump their shoes senseless shoes a pioneer of callouses lordy-be and bless my soul i'd be a barefoot spaceman the first you'd ever know" "The best way to have God's will for your life is to have no will of your own!" "Generations circle and each one atones. The sins of the father are seperate from my own. In Pilgrim's Progress, it's forgiveness that makes whole, and as time levels and consoles, I place the daisies in your bowl." "For a moment he just stared at her. Then, with an urf-urf-urf of laughter, he turned back to the controls." "It's on the internet.. so, then, it must be true." "Be at least as interested in what people can become as you are in what they have been." Blessed be the rock stars!" Get up for the shower.. wash and scrub and scour every part as if a cleaner man could better bear the shame.. "She was eating gnarly amounts of calcium." Homeless man to girl trying to give him money: "No, thanks, ma'am. I never work on Sundays." "Wow! I never thought I'd need a radar-guided spatula!" "Isn't it great that I articulate? Isn't it grand that you can understand? ... I can talk, I can talk, I can talk!" I believe that people laugh at coincidence as a way of relegating it to the realm of the absurd and of therefore not having to take seriously the possibility that there is a lot more going on in our lives than we either know or care to know... I suspect that part of it, anyway, is that every once and so often we hear a whisper from the wings that goes something like this: "You've turned up in the right place at the right time. You're doing fine. Don't ever think that you've been forgotten. When I lay these questions before God I get no answer. But a rather special sort of "No answer." It is not the locked door. It is more like a silent, certainly not uncompassionate, gaze. As though He shook His head not in refusal but waiving the question. Like, "Peace, child; you don't understand." CCM: You've spoken a lot more about crying than I ever thought you would. "Youth is not a period of time. It is a state of mind, a result of the will, a quality of the imagination, a victory of courage over timidity, of the taste for adventure over the love of comfort. A man doesn't grow old because he has lived a certain number of years. A man grows old when he deserts his ideal. The years may wrinkle his skin, but deserting his ideal wrinkles his soul. Preoccuptaions, fears, doubts, and despair are the enemies which slowly bow us toward earth and turn us into dust before death. You will remain young as long as you are open to what is beautiful, good, and great; receptive to the messages of other men and women, of nature and of God. If one day you should become bitter, pessimistic, and gnawed by despair, may God have mercy on your old man's soul." ""Don't go matchmaking for me, Ilse," said Emily wit a faint smile... "I feel in my bones that I shall achieve old-maidenhood, which is an entirely different thing from having old-maidenhood thrust upon you." "I wish Aunt Elizabeth would let me go to Shrewsbury, but I fear she never will. She feels she can't trust me out of her sight because my mother eloped. But she need not be afraid I will ever elope. I have made up my mind that I will never marry. I shall be wedded to my art" "Tomorrow seems like a long ways away. But it will come, just like any other day... Deep inside, where the wounded creatures hide, I am afraid. Maybe I got lost somewhere along the way somehow. Please rescue me... Yea, though I walk through the valley of the dark shadow of death, I will fear no evil. For you are with me... Though I fear, though I am afraid, You are with me. Though I'm angry, tired, broken down and confused, You are with me. Though I sin like I've never sinned before, lose myself right out an open door, You are with me." "The invisible people agreed about everything. Indeed most of their remarks were the sort it would not be easy to disagree with: "What I always say is, when a chap's hungry, he likes some victuals," or "Getting dark now; always does at night," or even "Ah, you've come over the water. Powerful wet stuff, ain't it?"" -- C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader "When People object... that if Jesus was God as well as Man, then He had an unfair advantage which deprives Him for them of all value, it seems to me as if a man struggling in the water should refuse a rope thrown to him by another who had one foot on the bank, saying, "Oh but you had an unfair advantage." It is because of His advantage that He can help." "But, you know, as a Christian, one of the big questions you always ask yourself is, "So we believe in Jesus, we believe in the teachings of the church, but what does that look like when it's lived out?" Because surely, one of the things that Jesus said that I think we often overlook is, "The person who hears my words and does them is like the wise man who built his house on the rock." He didn't say "the person who hears my words and thinks about 'em" or "whoever hears my words and agrees with it." But he said, "Whoever hears it and does it." "find that which gives you breath and grants you more to give "I have packed all my belongings. I don't belong here anymore. This pair of sandles, one pack to carry, this old guitar and this tattered old Bible. And I know I won't be afraid. 'cause I know, I know Home is where You are." "Open up your weepy eyes, everyone is dancing. Angels peer through sweet disguise, through a fire of cleansing. "Long hair, no hair; Everybody, everywhere:
Breathe Deep, breathe deep the Breath of God!" "You may be bruised and torn and broken, but
you're Mine!" "I don't deserve to speak, and they don't deserve
to hear it. It's makin' me believe that it's not
about me." "Kickin' against these goads sure did cut up my
feet. Didn't your hands get bloody as you washed
them clean?" "They say God blessed us with plenty. I say
you?re blessed with poverty. ?Cause you never
stop to wonder whether earth is just a little
better than the Land of the Free" "Computers will know everything in the 21st
century. They'll be like me in the 20th
century." |
