Turn My Mourning Into Dancing

The month of June is well over but it is still lingering with me.
The days were too long, passing too quickly.
On the morning of the 8th one of my closest friends called to tell me her brother was gone.
He died suddenly in an accident in Yellowstone, June 7th. He was 23 years old.
Even now, my mind and heart rebel at the words. It is too unreal, too bizarre, too cruel.
In all my memories, he is very much alive, an integral part of his family, his community, this world.

I have wished a hundred times over that there was a way to bypass the stilted inadequacy of words and even presence in such a time of grief. Ones own body and mind are inadequate to the task of grief. The mind surges with pain and then ebbs in forgetfulness. At times the body simply refuses to produce more tears or register the ache. What can one offer as comfort out of this state?
My heart breaks for Colin's mother, his father, and his siblings - my friends.
I have nothing to give them that can temper the jagged trauma of his loss or shorten the long days that will stretch into years of grief and longing.

In the depths of grief there is a place where none can follow or approach.
Christ alone waits there.
Yet even He does not close up the gaping hole that is left in this world in the wake of such a life.
Colin lived wholeheartedly, generously, boldly.
He left a mark everywhere he went, and now there are so many broken threads.
I am still in shock.
I have trudged through anger and suspicion towards God and been given not an answer but an assurance that Colin is truly and gloriously well.
God gives no answers, no reasons. When we stand before Him at last, the terrible beautiful truth is that we will not even ask Him for a reckoning.
Death has truly lost its sting... for the one who dies, the one who passes from death into glorious life.
For the rest of us, the wait is lengthened by the longing.