So Young

This is how I will remember you. This is how your spirit shone through in everything you did.

courtesy of WJ Gage

Even when your body was horribly bloated from the steroids, when the tumour took your vision and your words and your understanding and eventually your life, it never once stole your dignity or your spirit.

Len, me, Ruby (January 2013)

You were truly a "beautiful, precious gem," not just to James and the girls but to all of us. My faith is so little, so easily shaken, it's hard for me to understand that at the end, you were excited to die. You couldn't wait to meet your God, to get that perfect sight and that restored body. It's hard for me to understand that you asked us to be happy for you. It's hard for me to understand a universe without you in it, without your crazy energy and your goofy jokes and your emails of encouragement.

I'm trying to be joyous. Right now all I can be is angry, because I want to understand the reason for this loss, in the season of so much loss everywhere around the people I love most.

I almost never called you So Young, first because I knew you by your American name, then later because I was afraid if I said it too loudly God would hear. And I didn't want him to take you so young.