As I ponder, weak and weary

Will you pardon me for just having a couple of spiritual moments here? I know that I am self-expository to a degree that would cause Freud to shake his beard from side to side, but I consider my readers friends and my friends, readers, so I tend to share my thoughts here. Peggy, on the other hand, writes in her non-online journal every night, purely for self-expression. She looks back over the older entries from time to time, but I have never ever so much as touched one of her journals, which date back to like 1847. It's the difference between her and me, that she is private with her thoughts, which, I can assure you, are far more profound that my erratic ravings.

I'll pause while you leap to my defense.

Pausing.

Paus-ing!!!

I've just come off a very uncomfortable 48 hours of waiting for some news about a friend who slipped off the radar the other night, after some unpleasantness with someone else. I am not a patient person when it comes to the welfare of others, so I fretted and knit my brows and imagined dozens of horrible scenarios and prayed a lot. I just saw a slogan that someone posted that said "God answers all prayers, but sometimes the answer is no." Well, God heard my entreaties and finally decided to have someone get in touch with me and let me know what was going on. That person told me the latest updates; no need to go into detail here, but here's the funny thing. The messenger that God chose to hip me to this whole thing turned out to be someone whose loyalty I previously questioned, and here they are, the one link that I could count on, after all.

And then tonight I got the official death notice for another friend, a fellow who served in the county Fire Department for the length of a fine career and retired to be a local handyman kind of guy. Gosh, what a happy soul he was. He spent all his days and nights trying to help other people, whether in putting out the fire in their living room or rewiring the lamp in the foyer. He was a devout Christian, and he didn't mind sharing that with people either. But he had a series of strokes recently and was removed from life support.

So, this weekend I am dealing with a life that's been saved and a life that has ended, and of course the backdrop for the weekend is Memorial Day, and all that means to all of us. My mom was engaged to a man during WWII; he was killed in action when the plane he was flying was shot down. When my sister and I were kids, she spoke of him and his death, but in that way that people who have lived through a war have of nobly rising above the individual pain and mourning en masse. She had other friends who lost boyfriends, and she knew other guys who went to fight for freedom and never came back.

Death. Life. Second chances. How does it work out that I have been given so much in life, and have I told you how much I appreciate you for being in my life? Because, I do, the reason I bring it all up.