When I was young, the boy who had been my very best friend, my Huckleberry friend, died.
His name was Jacob.
My parents didn't bring me to his funeral. And so for me, suddenly, Jacob was just... gone.
He was the boy I played with every evening beneath his backyard willow tree. The boy I got into mischief with. The boy I had gone looking for one day, and gotten myself and my little brother very lost. The boy who had planted a kiss, my first, on me after we had fought over a swing. Even though he had many friends, in my heart, he was My Jacob.
I remember when my little brother told me through a closed door that Jacob had died. I'd tried to understand what he was saying, and the shock of it, it's actually never left me.
I still cannot see how it is. I still feel the shock.
Life went on for me. I grew up, went to college, got married, had a family, and now with older children I have a career. My life has been good. Sometimes I think about my dear friend, aware of the shock that is still cemented in my heart.
I will never be OK with Jacob dying.
It's instinctual. Militant. My soul can feel the problem in this broken world with every subsequent death I have known since Jacob. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, family friends, gone. I know it is wrong. Things are not as they are ultimately meant to be. It is too much loss for the universe to be OK with it.
Creation is incomplete.
I feel it with the death of a bird struck down on the road. The does and their fawns cut down on the highway. The rose bush that loses its leaf and becomes wood for the fire. The horror of war across the world. The children who are killed every day. The innocent that are murdered. Even with the death of the guilty. It's everywhere.
If I could, I would climb the highest mountain. I'd find the pathway to heaven. I'd climb the ladder. I'd tear the veil asunder. I'd stand with the winds of creation blowing all about me, and I would scream the truth loud enough that I would be heard.
But, creation already knows.
For the Lord is written inside all creation.
He is in the sun, the moon, the stars, and even the earth. He is Lord of all. In all things and by whom all things are.
And He told us that all those who had lived and died will live again.
I know the Lord is good. I know He is Lord of all.
I know He is coming.
Death will be slain.
And all things will be made right for every thing that has ever lived, for every person.
For Jacob.