I put a thumbtack in the hallway my freshman year. I just removed it from the wall, its been a fast four years. Time really starts to go by fast, this is it for high school I suppose. Today we were allowed to try on our caps and gowns, I walked around the hall in it, I was always told I wasn't going to graduate. Im not sure why God changed my life.
6/8/00
My brother came home for my graduation at 11:00 last night. I picked him up from the airport with my dad as I was signing Cindy's yearbook. I stayed up with him and watched a movie until about 300 am. It was really good to hear him laugh about the funny stuff. I really miss him, its gets hard not having him around.
6/10/00
It is the day after graduation. I walked down the halls and saw every one of my teachers in their cap and gowns. Each teacher has a colored hood that represents their school. Tori delivered an amazing Valedictorian speech. She said that I would be awarded most changed. After that I presented the President of PBA, (before I knew I was going there). They played a Cassie Brunall video, she actually spoke in the video. I remember reading her book (She said yes) one year after she was killed to the day unaware. My career as a Crusader has ended as a student. I fell empty but In a good way, I felt excited more than depressed or sad. When Tori was speaking I felt very comforted and when I saw that Diploma I was overwhelmed with confidence. Jen Manso came to my graduation, my first girlfriend. She gave me a picture of us together in 9th grade. When I threw my hat she caught it. I just thought I would write tonight to thank God for doing this for me and for revealing his grace to me. I woke up this morning with an amazing peace about this life, I hope it means something. I graduated.
1/24/03
This Christmas my best friend Victoria Angelone passed away. There is a story I will kepp in my heart and not in this book. I have learned that there is not a single breath that we can take for granted or a single moment that we should let pass through our hands. Every smile, every hug, every time we get into the sheets or every time we stare up at the stars and the moon. I want to take this thing in and enjoy it while it lasts. I went upstairs as the Barnes and nobles near my college. I went upstairs by this deli and looked out the window. I was so scared that I started crying, I really miss Tori a lot. That was the first moment I felt completely alone. I know that I will more than likely outlive my parents, my grandmother will be passing soon. Right now I am separated from my brother and his family and I haven't seen pain and suffering like this ever. Most of my time now is spent with college friends drinking, i'm not sure i'm even that close with them at all. That moment when I got the call that Tori was going to die I felt alone for the first time ever. I feel like Im praying to a God who is not listening to me anymore. My father reminded me to stay strong because It will only get harder and reminded me that nobody is going to do this life for me, I have to fight for myself.
I remember seeing Tori in that casket and I never really had a chance to say Goodbye. I remember she told me to come by the new house but we had grown somewhat apart by then, I was preoccupied in college. I suppose the mistake I made was believing she would be near me forever.
Love what you have whatever it is.
August
My Uncle Joe passed away, he was always my hero. I cant record every memory, those are for me. I cant record every memory of my aunt Joanne but I do remember one so vividly, perhaps a reason I love seafood to this day. I was in New York, Levitown that is, and I remember she told me there where lobster tails in a small mom and pop store near by. I rode a bike to get the lobster and she cooked it for me. Uncle Joe and Aunt Joanne also shared the gospel with me. Perhaps they were right about that, perhaps thats all that matters.
6/3/2010
My grandmother is having a hard time swallowing. I moved back into my parents house so that Im able to help my parents with her. She needs constant help, she has a nurse but I need to be here at night if my parents need to go out. I get made fun of a lot for living at home but I want to help her and make sure she Isn't alone. She used to want me to sit with her and watch these terrible TV shows and I never would, she would ask me to sit with her and I never would. I suppose I should be mad at myself for that but if I had it back I probably still wouldn't watch those game shows. My earliest memory of her was when she would babysit me and play checkers with me. Im not going to sit here and write about every memory, those are for me.
I remember my brother wanting to come in for her funeral from Hawaii but he wasn't able it was too expensive and too late. The Navy would only give him a few days and to fly in from Hawaii for a few days didn't make much sense. I wanted to pay for half of his ticket but a few days didn't make any sense.
The paramedics came to get her, they popped up the stretcher and she smiled. I can still see the smile she made that day. I'm not sure she understood that this was her time, She asked me "how long will I be here?" She smiled until the morphine took her out, She smiled and watched T.V. I can still smell that hopsital hand sanitizer. They took her out and then we found out she was going on morphine. I sat there every day this summer, after a few days she went down and never came back out of it. I suppose there are only two options at that point, have her suffer or kill the pain. Problem is, the morphine weakens you so bad you cant come back. She never came back.
They say that a person can hear you even when they lose what appears to be consciousness so we had to be careful what we said as far as her condition. The whole family was there, I wouldn't trade my family for the entire world.
One night I came up with my suit on, I don't remember why, It may have been after church on a Wed. The nurse mistook me for the mortician and said Im not sure anybody died tonight Sir. I explained to her that at that point I was clergy, I went in to see her after hours and only clergy could get in which I suppose I was being that Im am intern at the church at this point. I sat there that night and watched her breathing. She had this little doll they gave her to hold one to, and I watcher her hold on to it and breathe. One time what seemed like every 30 or 40. seconds. Strange thing saying goodbye. After a few days she was gone. The day she died I was in the room next to her and the nurse came in and told me she was gone, she was going to the restroom to cry I suppose.
I went in the room and she was there, but not. The first thing I said to her was that she was lucky. I suppose thats the wrong use of words but my reaction was that the pain was over, she got to be with Jesus and I still had to be here. I had ro have Christmas without her for the first time, I was jealous, sad yet assured she was with God, I really believe she is with God. We are fighters, she was a fighter. We don't say die my family, we fight like junkyard dogs. She fought and I saw it with my own eyes. My uncle was a fighter also. I suppose thats just who we are, fighters. I will fight too. My mother and father and brother all of us. My mother has an eye condition, a nervous condition, she fights everyday. My father fights to make her dreams come true. Mt brother fights to feed his family as a high school dropout and a member of the United States Navy, I fought to graduate with a masters and fight overwhelming anxiety to give my students the gospel. I will fight for redemption.
The day she died they wheeled her out and I watched the white blanket go past me. I stayed behind to watch her wheel passed me.
The best thing a father can do for a son or daughter is love his mother. I saw my father love my mother that day, the day her mother passed on. I read her Psalm 23 and Psalm 91 before she passed and I suppose she heard me speaking, I suppose that is my hope, that she heard me speaking.
I spoke at her funeral and this was the verse I read.
The Resurrection Body 1 Corinthian 15: 35-58
But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?” How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body. Not all flesh is the same: People have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another and fish another. There are also heavenly bodies and there are earthly bodies; but the splendor of the heavenly bodies is one kind, and the splendor of the earthly bodies is another. The sun has one kind of splendor, the moon another and the stars another; and star differs from star in splendor.
So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.
If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. So it is written: “The first man Adam became a living being the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. The first man was of the dust of the earth; the second man is of heaven. As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the heavenly man, so also are those who are of heaven. And just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, so shall we bear the image of the heavenly man.
I declare to you, brothers and sisters, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.
“Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?i
Listen, I tell The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.
I concluded with these words from Robert Frost. I can explain everything I've learned about life in 3 words. "Life goes on". Its time to go on now.
We went to visit her a few months ago, ten years from graduation. We planted a flower What is this life, can it be explained? I suppose I know how to explain it. Love, only Love. Love God, love neighbor, love with your words, with your actions, just love until we meet him.
I suppose when she died or even when she was born she had no idea that 1 Corinthians 15 was going to be read at her funeral a week after she passed. Im sure she had sat under a sermon on that text or maybe even read it may times herself. I suppose the fact that it was is a clear indication of where she is now and when she was while she was here. She was a woman of faith and prayer despite little education. She was a believer. There's Jesus Grandma, dance with him.
2/26/2011
So here I am on a saturday afternoon 10 years since graduation, 1o years a christian, I was saved on Feb 19, 2000, I believe the same day my grandfather passed, that is Fen 19 but not 2000. I am without Tori, without my Uncle Joe and my Aunt Joanne, without Grandma Nettie. Aside from my Father, Mother and brother they are the people that are the closest to me, the people I felt comfortable around, the ones I loved the most. Part of me believes they are not in any harm, not in any uncomfortable state or in any pain. Part of me knows for sure they are in a place where all things are new. I suppose God takes the things that are closest to us away to remind us that this world is not our home.
Abraham is one of my heroes n the Bible. He lost so much, carrying his tent as a reminder that this world is not our home but always building altars to worship God despite his loss of his wife and what he believed to be all his sons. He worshipped despite the circumstance as did David and Christ and so many others. This is faith, a faith I want so I too will worship. They knew, they know now still, the better side of things. There is a better side of things, a side of things that is bought by Christ, with no tears, no pain and no more saying goodbye, a place where all things are new. As for now, life goes on, it just goes on.
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