Today it was a basketball legend and the world it seems sits up and takes notice for what will be the equivalent of a minute. What is more tragic than the death itself is that his young daughter died as well. But for what seems like an unimaginable loss to those who were fans but never met these people, for their families the word devastating is massively trite.
I feel like human beings have the values of life and death reversed. We tend to all come together at times of great loss and death and yet we find reasons all to often to ignore opportunities to be a part of the lives of those who we say we miss when they are gone. This may anger some people for me to say what I'm about to say but if it helps awaken a mind or two before it's too late then it will have been worth it. Regardless of the notoriety or lack thereof as in my case of the ones we lose, how many of the people who express great sadness do you think actually spoke to or took the time to go see who is no longer here?This is where I tread on thin ice but oh well. My mom was one of the most generous and caring human beings God ever put on this earth. When she passed away 10 weeks ago there was a room full of people the night prior to her service at the memorial and then quite a number of people at her burial the next day and I can tell you the names of every person who was there and didn't have to be, and all the names of the people who were not there and should have been. Both those who took the time to come pay their respects to me and those who didn't come for either my mom or me because "I had to work and couldn't make it," to, "he doesn't like funerals," and even those who were there who had recently shown behavior in my mom's presence while she lay in her worst condition, an angry and selfish lack of concern for my mom's circumstances and thus my own, all of them used expressions of compassion, sympathy, and loss after my mom passed away. Those I can never forget are the ones who showed those feelings long before November 16 and I'll have to have God's help in forgetting those who only expressed them after that day.
The purpose of writing this isn't to shame anyone for being who they are. My purpose is to make those who may stumble on this blog to think about their own mortality and that of those they love and care about. The easy part of the death of someone special to you is to use nice words of love and sympathy and sadness. What is completely impossible to do is to hide the fact you couldn't find the time and in a couple of cases the dignity and respect to show those loving feelings in person while that someone was here and could feel it.
There are people as we speak that if taken out of your life will have you questioning whether or not life is truly worth living anymore. I know of what I speak. If this post forces you to take a good look at the issues you may have with one of them and patch things up, then great. My purpose was to express how it feels to have death instead of life bring people together and how those expressions after death reek of hypocrisy from where I sit today. If you truly love and care for someone in your life, the value of showing over saying it should be clear to you and more importantly to them. It's nice to hear I love you, but it's God's intention that you show it over saying it and you will have already been doing that long before you feel like you need to say something that will seem on the surface at least, to appear a bit disingenuous..
In a world full of hypocrites and liars, we smile to blend in.
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