Thanatopsis

Today I watched a woman bury her husband. She trembled as she stood beside the casket, as though the sheer weight of her grief would cause her to collapse. He was a good man, and in the wake of his passing she has been left scathingly alone. She said goodbye to a part of herself today, and all I could do was stand and watch.

Today I watched a young man bury his father. His voice wavered as he spoke that final goodbye, though his dignity and strength were steady and strong. He spoke of fond memories, the distant echoes of a way of life which would never be again. As he looked at the golden wood of that cruel box which held the hollow shell of his world and spoke that final “I love you”, all I could do was stand back and watch.

Today I watched my father bury his friend. A small smile crossed his face as he mentioned past camaraderie and laughter, though his eyes reflected sorrow. His inner turmoil remained unseen as he grieved for the loss of a brother, and he stood strong in order to allow the grief of others to flow freely. Haunting memories whispered in his ear, memories of other goodbyes quietly demanding to be heard, and all I could do was stand back and watch.

Today I buried a man. I wept openly from where I sat; wept for the family, wept for the friends, wept for myself. I wept out of empathy for the pain of those who had been left behind. I wept out of fear of one day saying goodbye to those whom I love. I wept out of my own silent pain, wanting so badly to forget those cherished memories which silently bind me to another casket.

Yet for all the tears, memories, and pain, there is hope. We have placed our faith in the One who is faithful, and the day will come when our tears will be no more. But until that day comes, we wait and we grieve for those relationships which have been cut so cruelly short. We grieve for those whose pain is so real and overwhelming. We grieve for we were not made for this. The day will come when the Almighty will overthrow death and the evil one by His own power. The day has already passed when He died in our place, and by His stripes we have been healed. He saw what we had done to ourselves, the tears and pain we had inflicted upon ourselves, and He took it upon Himself to intervene and give us the gift of hope.

I am so glad He did not just stand back and watch.

Public Displays of Incompetence

Sometimes in life you do something without even thinking about it, only to later realize what seemed so rational at the time was, in fact, rather silly.

For example, when I go to the gym, I always take my car key off the key ring, place it in my pocket (along with my Y membership card), and then lock my purse in the trunk of my car. It just makes more sense to me to do things this way, rather than getting a locker.

Yesterday when I went to the gym, I locked my purse in the trunk and trotted inside to have my card swiped before heading upstairs, where they keep the treadmills. After the nice lady behind the desk swiped my card, I went to put both the card and they key into my pants pocket, only to discover that the pocket wasn't there. Upon further inspection, I was quick to discover that I had come to the gym with my pants on inside-out. How embarrassing. You'd think after 23 years, I would have learned how to dress myself properly.

Another example. Today I was thinking about this blog, and how the background image does not, in fact, truly fit with the blog. When I log on to the site via my desktop computer, everything shows up just fine, but when I use my dad's laptop, the image of Taipei is scrunched over to one side with a big white bar streaking its way down the right side of the screen.

This is the part where I confess a weakness of mine. You ready for this?

I honestly know next to nothing about web design.

This wouldn't be so embarrassing if you didn't realize that I've been keeping random blogs for some 7 or 8 years now. I've tinkered around with plenty of html and other coding stuff, but I've never fiddled with anything long enough to become truly proficient. So when the layout of this blog was going bonkers, I really had no idea 1) why it was doing that, or 2) how to fix it. So today, after reading the latest entry at this website, and pondering how much I like her layout, I impulsively logged in to blogger and changed mine to the simplest, cleanest one I could find. Ideally, I would love to have 1) Heather's mad photoshop skills, and 2) even a vague idea of how to make my blog look remotely like that. But this new white template seemed to be the closest I could get, so I took it.

After changing my template, I quickly checked the site itself to see how it looked. Imagine my surprise when I saw "1 comments" written below my last entry, clicked to see who'd been scoping out my tiny corner of cyberspace, and read these words...

"I love the picture of Taipei that you're using..."

This is the part where I feel like an idiot. And, due to my lack of higher brain functions, I don't even remember how I got the blog to look that way in the first place. Le sigh.

My apologies, Jen. My changing of the layout was in no way connected to your comment. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go make sure that all my clothes are turned right-side out.