Love is the Greatest

Despite the long holiday weekend, it just seems like I didn’t have enough time off. But it’s beyond that. My soul is a bit sick and saddened.
A co-worker of mine passed away on June 27th. He was a friend of mine, more than a co-worker, a good guy who cared about those around him. We never met face to face, he was in Maryland, but we worked together via phone and email almost every day.

Today I came into work, cleaning up emails and sending out inspection confirmations, and as fate would have it, he was on many of the emails I had to send out. It was so depressing, so saddening, so hard to delete his name from each and every email. Painful almost, like a void was opening up, allowing all the disbelief to poor thru.

You don’t know how things will effect you, I was shocked when I heard, almost numb, now I feel sick. Sick that I have to do this without him, sick that I had to delete his name from my reply emails, sick that my company hasn’t even acknowledged his death, sick that his family is left struggling without him, sick that his friends all over have the same void I do.

Adding to the void is the death of my uncle on the 4th of July. My whole family is gathering in Florida and I’m here. Trying to sort it all out, trying to separate life, emotion, sadness, from work. It’s so hard. I feel for my Aunt, losing her husband, losing part of herself, losing a soul mate.

I keep thinking back on times that we were all together, the things we did, the days on the beach, the days at Water World, the times that you are glad to be together, but you end up taking for granted in the long run. He was that grounding force in the family, a voice of reason, he replaced my grandfather as the stabilizing figure, now he’s gone, leaving all us crazy women to run the place, and I giggle at this, because God has a sense of humor, and His will is His way, and it leads to another path of enlightenment, or insanity, not sure which yet.

I just want to scream, to run away from it all, to just shut it all out and cry until I can’t do it anymore, until all I can do is lie down and pass out.

More than that, it makes you reflect on your life. It makes you realize how quickly your time can be cut off. And then it takes me back again and again to how you use your life. All the struggling, strife, and crap we put up with. When in the end what matters is the love you gave, who you loved, how you loved, and the love you got back from it all.

1 Corinthians 13
Love Is the Greatest

1 If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing. 3 If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it;[a] but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.
4 Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud 5 or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. 6 It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. 7 Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance……..
13 Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.