Why am I telling you this today of all days? Today is the 20th Anniversary of that most tragic day. Today is the day when my very best friend, my brother, was killed in a car accident right in front of me. He was 26 and I was 22. He had a full life ahead of him and a precious 2 year old son who needed his daddy.
In "Girl, Wash Your Face", Rachel Hollis talks about her brother's suicide. She also talks about how weird it is to look back and feel both the sting of the loss and to also see the good that has come as a result. I loved reading those words from her, as that feeling is all too familiar to me.
See, remembering the loss today is more real and raw than it has been in years. Perhaps it's because it is so hard to believe that it's been 20 years, or perhaps it's because I just spent most of last year writing about it. It was incredibly difficult to go back and put myself at the scene of the accident again. There are no words to describe the anguish I felt as I relived those darkest of days after I lost him, where the emptiness and the hopelessness threatened to consume me forever.
And yet......
There are also no words for the good it did my heart to go back to that season of life and remember those first audible words I heard the Lord say to me. I took myself back to the day I laid in the mud in the cemetery and allowed God to comfort my heart in the ways that only He can. Looking back helped me remember how God took that most tragic day and made so much good come from it.
I miss Bob...I will always miss him. There will always be an empty Bob sized hole in my heart...and he was a BIG guy...so it's a big hole. I don't just miss him on March 4th, or October 15th (his birthday), I miss him often. I am constantly aware of his absence. When I am going through a rough season, I still wonder what advice he would give to me if I could call him. When I get to spend time with his son Josh, I wonder how different he would be if he would have grown up with his daddy who loved him beyond measure.
The accident didn't have to happen for God to capture my soul, but since it did happen...I am so grateful that God didn't waste the opportunity to grab a hold of me. It was the promise that I would get to see Bob again in heaven that drew me to God in the first place...little did I know that God had so much more to offer. I am who I am today because of Jesus. He has begun a good work in me, and He will be faithful to complete it.
I know that I have friends that are currently grieving fresh losses of their own. So much fresher than a 20 year anniversary. My prayer is that God will continue to comfort them right where they are, for as long they need to grieve. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross' quote has always resonated with me. It doesn't matter if it is the one year anniversary or the 20th.....any one who has lost someone they have deeply loved...will never be the same....nor should they want to be. However, I do hope that, in time, they can look back and rejoice in the midst of the grieving. That they might find the good that has come from that loss. It might look like loving those left behind a little better. It might look like speaking things that had been previously left unsaid. It might look like fighting for a cure....or perhaps...like me....it might look like a life unlike anything you could have dreamed or imagined.
