another angel

if you've been following the amazing Alese Coco...she moved on this afternoon at 1:20. funny how we're immediately so attached to those little numbers, as if the time of death creates a certain comfort. makes it real.
this is another tough one from a medical perspective because it was not hodgkins that killed her but a medical issue created by a doc. probably a doc who feels lower than an angleworm's belly about now...but then, docs are supposed to be perfect people. the knife is never supposed to slip. if you want the details, go to alesecoco.org and just weep with a beautiful family who has persevered through this with such a Christlike spirit that it is a wonder to read.
which brings us to another anniversary: yesterday i stood on the spot where i last saw jonathan tafe walking. and my last words to him and to the other boys? "be sure to wear your seatbelts." tomorrow will mark the afternoon he ceased to feel his legs, lying in his sleeping bag in the desert, thrown onto a not-so-random rock. it could have been under his head and it would now be a different sort of anniversary. but he is looking well, acting well, perhaps more interested in life than he was two years ago.
still, in my mind i see the three of them running to the car, jumping like little boys, two days before that mother's day...if it were not for the power of Jesus, i do not know how i could survive this life. without Him there is no source, no comfort, no hope.
blessings on alese's family, on jon and his family...tragedy takes us by surprise every time, reshapes our existence without our permission and then shakes us until we think there is nothing left.
but that is ultimately a good and clarifying thing.
pray for the Cocos. The funeral is saturday at 11. pray for jon who must remember tomorrow the horrific details of losing his ability to run and jump. God does all things well and this does not make the losses easier, only easier to bear.
"the aching may remain but the breaking does not." Andrew Peterson