fear not, He said, I have overcome the world

 “It’s all fine to say, “Time will heal everything, this too shall pass away. People will forget”—and things like that when you are not involved, but when you are there is no passage of time, people do not forget and you are in the middle of something that does not change.” 

~John Steinbeck, Cannery Row~

Is it true that when a man is dying hope is the last to go? Or maybe regret, you know, for the more important things one should have focused on but didn’t: family, love and a whole bunch of like stuff? I don’t know, I’m not dying, but I watched my father almost die every day for months, and every day I wondered what life was like through his eyes. It’s not something I like to remember, until recently I think I blocked every image from that time. I still wonder even now, even though the threat of death is now behind us.

Flo died. She was loud and lively, she had the optimism of three rainbows, and she died. And she is in a better place. It’s easy to say that, because I mean, it is fact. Where we are going is a better place than where we are. But this was truer for her. And I am angry. We are all angry. Not at God for allowing it to happen, because God’s truth I don’t think any of us would call her back even if we were given the choice.

27 years, that’s how long she was around for. And for the better part of those years no one ever saw the burdens she carried. No one could imagine that behind that frame that clung to Christ so ably, making all of us imagine it was totally doable, there was a gory tale.

Flo downlived it every day for years. And she did so without changing, without losing grace, without frowning at the world or taking it out on anyone. And now she is not around anymore. And we are angry. We are all angry. We are angry at human beings. Not in general, with faces and names and stuff.

I’ve always imagined that nothing is impossible with man given the right set of circumstances. Mother will turn against daughter, father against son, and every single one of us is capable of the most heinous acts of evil that has ever been. That part is fact. Which is why I cling to Christ, because even I cannot imagine the depth of my wickedness, I must have Him with me at all times.

So, given the right circumstances, someone can tear your resilience down bit by bit. Hit you below the belt and never let up. Continually crush your spirit and every ounce of dignity and self-belief that you have nurtured, and tear at your very essence until you are nothing but a mass of shrapnel not unlike a building torn down by bombs.

A number of statements come to mind:

You are capable of handling situations you couldn’t have possibly imagined. Fathers will disown you. The love of your life will sleep with someone else. The person who made you will hit you. Your best friends will die. A man will ignore your fervent “no” and take what he wants. And still you will find yourself filling your lungs when situations should have left them empty. It is in those moments that you’ll remember there isn’t anything you cannot overcome.

~Danielle Campoamor: 30 Life Lessons for 20-Somethings with Too Many Feelings~

Mostly that’s true, but what if you can’t? What if you can’t fill your lungs anymore and you just simply give up and say something like ‘I am going to be quiet now’. And then nobody ever hears from you again?

I went to Google in search of answers. Not about life, actually I was looking for quotes about forgetting. I found that first one up there. Shortly after we found out Dinah and I kept wondering how life could possibly keep going as though nothing happened. You know, you want to stop people on the street and go like, “Yo! People, hold up, hold up, this major thing just happened; this unbelievably strong woman is no longer with us. Please be still and respect that for a while, okay? ”

But you couldn’t. Life goes on, and pretty soon people will forget. Maybe we too, will not remember it with as much vividness. We’ll always have memories of the times and etc, but as time goes by, the pain will fade, and new memories will take part of the room we have reserved for Flo.

Maybe that’s not a bad thing at all. Because it’s a sad thing when you are relieved that your friend is no longer here. It’s sad when you know that given the chance you would never call her back to the life she lived. I wonder what she’s thinking, looking at us from up there. I wonder what life would be like if we didn’t forget things, if we remembered everything as vividly as though it happened yesterday.

So this is my lament. I hope I am allowed that much. I have not questioned God’s Will, or His wisdom. In Him I have unshakable faith that everything in the universe is unfolding exactly as it should. But David wailed. Jeremiah wrote an entire book wailing. I’m allowed this much. Because our souls need to be purged of the pain, and in the words of Anne Frank:

"I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn." ~Anne Frank~

I write because a great woman died. And while the world will go on, we noticed. For a few people in the world, time stood still. And so maybe in time, we won’t recall as much; but right here and now, today, we noticed. I noticed. And I write to engrave the memories of this remarkable woman all over the sands of time. I will write for as long as I have the words. Because people deserve to be remembered when they are no longer here. Life must go on, but we in turn, must never forget to those to whom we owe a significant chapter in our lives.

Farewell Flocy, I know you make the face of heaven so fine!