Dancing with the Angels...

Death…it’s inevitable. We can’t protect our loved ones enough to keep them from dying. We have experienced death in our family two times in the last three weeks. Not long lost cousins, or aunts that we hardly knew. These two guys were close to our hearts, very close. One fought for two weeks after his cancer diagnoses; the other didn’t have any time to fight and was perfectly healthy the morning that he passed away. Being around people who are morning puts things into perspective really fast. We don’t know how long our loved ones are going to be here.
Another part of death is explaining it to the youngsters. Hannah took the news of her Papa dying pretty hard. So when it was Angela’s turn to explain that her only other Grandpa had passed away, the task was daunting…not something that any parent wants to have to do. As much as we wish we could protect our children from pain, we can’t. Telling a 9 year old that “it’s all part of life” doesn’t really make sense to them. They want concrete answers that they can see and touch and hear. When death happens we don’t always have those concrete answers.
Making the slide show and coming up with music for the funeral has been interesting. I went with Dancing with the Angels by Monk and Neagle, With Hope by Steven Curtis Chapman, and Third Day’s Cry Out to Jesus. We’ll see how it all turns out…