Sunday, October 17, 2004
my lil bro & grief
my lil brother has a blog. he's a lil person now. funny to see him grow up. i gotta talk to him about some stuff. teenage angst. oh, how i do not miss that.
grief
on other news, a friend from church passed away on thursday. i wasn't all that close to him, but i did train as a lector (reader during mass) with him a long, long time ago and he got stuck reading for the 7:30am masses cuz he said he was open to that. we also chaperoned a couple of confirmation retreats these last two years. and i actually just worked with him last month at the confirmation class. he had just agreed to take on the junior high ministry. he was only 22 years old, about to graduate from usc this spring. he and his family were very active in the parish. i actually just left him a voicemail inviting him to a meeting last thursday and then my mom called me half an hour later asking me if i remember him. i said, yeah, i just called his cell phone. and my mom asked me if i talked to him and i said no, i left a voice mail. and that's when she told me he passed away. i asked her what?! how?! and she said that he took his life. his mother found him slumped over in the garage. carbon monoxide poisoning. he apparently had much pressure and didn't know how to say no. my god, i just saw him. i was even looking forward to working with him and getting to know him better.
i didn't think it affected me all that much. but now i know why i've been so off this past weekend. i thought it was stress and/or loneliness, and especially cuz glenn and i haven't had much alone time at all. but now i know it was because of pete. grief doesn't hit me right away, i noticed. but it eventually hits. i went to the prayer service this evening and i cried so hard. i've never seen the church so packed as it was tonight. people were standing in the aisles, spilling outside the church doorways. he touched so many people's lives, even for the few moments that i knew him, he made such an impact on mine. there were classmates of his, many family members, lots of tears. everyone grieving. we will all feel the loss of his presence. may God bless him and have mercy on his soul. we will miss you pete!
thanx for comforting me bebe.
grief
on other news, a friend from church passed away on thursday. i wasn't all that close to him, but i did train as a lector (reader during mass) with him a long, long time ago and he got stuck reading for the 7:30am masses cuz he said he was open to that. we also chaperoned a couple of confirmation retreats these last two years. and i actually just worked with him last month at the confirmation class. he had just agreed to take on the junior high ministry. he was only 22 years old, about to graduate from usc this spring. he and his family were very active in the parish. i actually just left him a voicemail inviting him to a meeting last thursday and then my mom called me half an hour later asking me if i remember him. i said, yeah, i just called his cell phone. and my mom asked me if i talked to him and i said no, i left a voice mail. and that's when she told me he passed away. i asked her what?! how?! and she said that he took his life. his mother found him slumped over in the garage. carbon monoxide poisoning. he apparently had much pressure and didn't know how to say no. my god, i just saw him. i was even looking forward to working with him and getting to know him better.
i didn't think it affected me all that much. but now i know why i've been so off this past weekend. i thought it was stress and/or loneliness, and especially cuz glenn and i haven't had much alone time at all. but now i know it was because of pete. grief doesn't hit me right away, i noticed. but it eventually hits. i went to the prayer service this evening and i cried so hard. i've never seen the church so packed as it was tonight. people were standing in the aisles, spilling outside the church doorways. he touched so many people's lives, even for the few moments that i knew him, he made such an impact on mine. there were classmates of his, many family members, lots of tears. everyone grieving. we will all feel the loss of his presence. may God bless him and have mercy on his soul. we will miss you pete!
thanx for comforting me bebe.
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quotable quotes
-
"To try is to risk failure. But risk must be taken because the
greatest hazard of life is to risk nothing. The person who risks
nothing does nothing, has nothing, is nothing. He may avoid
suffering and sorrow, but he simply cannot learn, feel, change,
grow, live, and love."
~unknown
"It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues."
~ Abraham Lincoln
"live a life that others will remember years from now, NOT because it pointed to you but because of how it pointed to the One who made you."
~ Mark Hart, the Bible Geek
"we grow up learning to become self-reliant, but really we need to be God-reliant"
"we could learn a lot from crayons: some are sharp, some are pretty, some are dull, some have weird names, and all are different colors....but they all exist very nicely in the same box"
"never wound hearts that love u, never give them the endless pain, because wounded hearts are like roses that never bloom"
"there comes a time when we have to stop loving someone not because that person has stopped loving us but because we have found out that they'd be happier if we'd let go"
