Goodnight Newel...

We live in such interesting times. We can follow news--not just national, or international news, but news of family and friends--in real time. Instantly, we can know not only the location of loved ones, but with a digital message, how people are doing, how they feel, even what they're eating. And we navigate our lives as if this has always been the case, as if communicating with others anywhere on the planet with only a slight delay for a signal to bounce around the curvature of the earth is as normal as breathing.

We know of weddings, births, goals met, games won, lives enriched.

We also know the moment loved ones pass.

For there's opposition in all things.

Today I learned a man I've known almost all my life passed away. He's the father of my dear friends, a patriarch of a family that, at times, I felt as close to as my own. And I morn with them.

As is the case with many relationships, seeing them, talking with them--sharing their company, has not happened in years. But the time apart melts with the power of memory. I can easily recall the times spent in my friend's home, a structure bordered by road and stream, a home that if you look at it today, it's difficult to imagine raising five children in it because it's so small. But they did. I remember the kitchen transitioned to the living room and beyond, bedrooms. It was the living room where the guitar lay waiting patiently for its owner to pick it up and lovingly, respectfully, create music, a physical manifestation of the home's soul.

I remember also a story, told by the oldest son, of a time when he called upon his father to help him unfreeze a frozen car door lock. The adventure involved, among other things, a hair dryer, and an Exit sign in parking garage. Though I wasn't there, the telling of the experience brought me to tears, not only because of the hilarity of if all, but because imagining such a brilliant man and son using their combined intelligence not finding ultimate success was truly funny, honest, naked comedy.

Even though I've gone through what my friend's family is experiencing now, everyone's reaction to the passing of a parent is different. They, along with me and my siblings, are now without parents, both having left. It opens a chapter all will face if we but live long enough. So I join hundreds, if not thousands of others--both here and beyond--who simultaneously morn and celebrate the life of a good, honest, decent, brilliant man, a man for whom there will be shed both tears of pain and of joy.

For there is opposition in all things.

Goodnight Newel.