stuff is cool

I just came home from Grayson’s memorial service. It was heartwrenching. The kids all looked absolutely bewildered. The hardest for me was afterwards, when I ran into my precious babysitting charge Tim. I have known him since he was 5, and now he is a freshman in high school, and he has just lost one of his best friends. He saw me and just fell into my arms and cried so hard. Oh, it was awful. All those children have to grow up so fast when they should be enjoying their first taste of high school.

But something strange and comforting happened during the service. I was sitting there in the middle of a very packed St. Luke’s, which has an enormous sancturary. Suddenly, a single autumn leaf flittered gently down right onto me. My friend Charner sitting next to me and I both looked up and were startled. Where did it come from? There was nothing above me but elaborately carved white ceiling. Besides, it’s still summer!

It made me think of a book I was given when I was around ten, and struggling deeply with the concept of life and death. It was about a leaf named Freddy who eventually had to fall off the tree so that a new leaf could grow. Honestly, the book didn’t calm my fears that much, but I still remember it, and I thought of it today as we mourned a 14-year-old boy. I don’t know where that single leaf came from, or why it landed on me, but it is a strange comfort that I haven’t quite worked out in my head or in my heart yet.