A thing of beauty, something sad

It was a bittersweet week, as I lost a good friend from my youth, and at age 63 I was honored to be a pallbearer for a younger man who clearly was taken too soon. My friend Michael and I shared many crazy adventures during the time I was in Europe and he was maintaining a marginal GPA to remain at Indiana University. Those several weeks will live in my memory forever, but were shared this past week with others at his wake. We had met before college, where a group from high school would play touch football in his large side yard, and our group included many who were added and subtracted from a core group. In 1969 I was stationed in Germany, and he would fly over with two others and we'd meet up and drive through the low countries and into France where his little sister was abroad. Well, actually, you'd never get away with calling her a broad, but that's another story.

Anyway, Mike was to suffer an aneurysm which is, I suppose, at least better than a lingering and suffering type of death. But he was gone, and that was the sad part. He wasn't going to be there for his two children, he wasn't going to be there for his friends, and there was a void created that cannot be filled.

So this was a week that started with sadness, and needed a counterpoint. What can one do when contemplating the awful realities of life (and death), but to find beauty in nature. Hence, the swan. Yes, if there is anything in nature that evokes beauty and grace, it would be this bird. I am blessed to live where there are three pairs of mated swans, and every day Ripley and I see at least two birds, often four. They mate for life, and where there is one, you'll find another. Michael never mated for life, but had two very nice offspring, and having lost a common father we can only hope they now will be closer and watch over each other even more than in the past. Like me, they now have only warm memories of a loved one.

Michael, Rest In Peace - knowing you left a mark that cannot be erased.