Love. Grief. Love.

My wife's sister, Pat Stanfield (shown here with her husband, Vernon Stanfield), passed away on December 13.

In the weeks since then, I realized that I have lost either a friend or a family member every year for six years running. 

I still believe in resurrection generally, and in the resurrection of Jesus in particular, and in the coming reunion of those who are in Him.

But still...damn, I'm getting tired. And growing more sad. Missing people more.

This is part of what it means to reach this stage of life. The longer you live, the more you lose.

I was still absorbing that lesson, with its implications, when my nephew, Alphonzo Sterling, died suddenly last week. He had a list of ailments, but it still came as a shock.

And the sadness deepens.

The longer you live, the more you lose.

Nothing to be done, as far as I can tell, except to love hard while we can. To love more deeply those who have been given to me, and who remain.

But more than that...

A refrain from Jefferson Airplane, of all things, increasingly loops in my brain: 

"Don't you want somebody to love?

Don't you need somebody to love?

Wouldn't you love somebody to love?

You better find somebody to love."

For me, that quatrain has gained a meaning that I'm sure the author did not intend: namely, that as more and more people whom I love leave this world, I need to find new people to love, lest my very capacity to love shrink and atrophy. 

It would be so easy to allow that. And in a way, so comfortable, to have fewer and fewer people to care about. To increasingly disengage. To abide in numbness.

But......YUCK.

Lord, help me find more people to love; to honor the deceased by loving others in their memory.