A Year Has Gone By
How hard to believe that it has been a year since Mike died.

He was my nephew who was diagnosed with lung cancer at the age of 26 in May, 2004 who died last October, only five months later.

I know I haven’t been affected as deeply as his parents who I am sure still struggle daily with what happened and how to live with it. Yet hardly a day goes by that I don’t think back on that time and feel the pain and sadness. His name and the clear ribbon in his memory still sit there on the right side of this page.

Friends of his have run the Boston Marathon and other races in his memory, raising funds for cancer research at the Dana Farber Center in Boston.

My wife and I have put poinsettias and lilies in church at Christmas and Easter in his memory.

A picture of Mike with his dad and me sits in my office.

I have noticed all the things that I have often seen in others happen in myself this past year. From a distance, to be sure, but they have been there. But perhaps the most difficult has been just plain dealing with the reminder of mortality that it brings. We can hear of the deaths of thousands in Hurricanes and be moved but not affected. It is always the death of one we know and love that makes us shudder in the uncertainty of life.

In the Jewish faith kaddish is said for a year after a death. The old traditions may know something about the process of grief. I know it will never be over. But at this one year, the memories, while still bittersweet and painful are beginning to lose their hard edge for me. I know mine never were as painful as my brother’s pains, but they have been a reminder of the need for community, support, and God.