10.06.2012

the date

This date comes around every year. It has been coming around since time began. But since 1999, this date brings a lump to my throat and a smile to my face-- a lump as I remember Bob's death; a smile as I remember Bob. 


My dishwasher stopped working a month or so ago. It was annoying. Doing dishes by hand? No fun. But I was able to get a "new" dishwasher from a lady I know, and now I am just waiting for Brent to install it. And then I realized we would be taking out the dishwasher that Bob bought Kelly when they lived in this house. As much as I want a new dishwasher, a part of me is sad to take this old one out. I can just picture Bob on his hands and knees, working his ingenuity to install it. 

And I wish so badly he could come help Brent hook up the new one. 

For those of you that don't know, Bob was killed while doing a routine traffic stop thirteen years ago. That number, thirteen, seems so impossibly large. Thirteen is almost half of my lifetime. I have written about this for several years on this day. I write because that is how I process best; it is how I remember best. And I write because it is a small way of holding on, and a small way of not forgetting the ultimate sacrifice Bob made. 

But as those of you that have lost a loved one know… life plunges on without them, and we must figure out how to live in their loud absence. And we must daily trust a God that is bigger than we can imagine throughout it all. 

Today I simply ask that you would say a prayer for the lives that were touched by Bob-- for the lives that are missing him even more on this day. 

And I posted the lyrics to this hymn a few years ago, and they seem appropriate again today: 

No pang shall be mine, for in death as in life
                      Thou wilt whisper Thy peace to my soul
Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say, 
It is well with my soul....

No comments: