day after his funeral
on the beach
the winter sun melting
the snow
eiders huddled in the surf

It has been quite a week. David's friend Don finally succumbing to the cancer on Saturday, the cooking and visiting on Sunday, visiting hours on Tuesday and the funeral on Wednesday--all this taking place more than an hour away, with snow and ice the morning of the funeral, and then right back into life as usual on Thursday. As Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost often wrote of, the living goes on. In "Out, out--" by Frost, the last line: "And they, since they/Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs." I can't say that it's quite as simple as all that, but walking on the beach the next day,I couldn't help think how life just keeps going. Of course, not without being affected. This was a close friend of David's, too young to die, leaving a wife and four children, all who very courageously spoke in the church, a church packed with friends, family and students he had taught and coached over the years--his death leaving a huge void for so many. My heart breaks for his wife, for his family and for David who has lost such a good friend, co-worker and partner. And then there were all the conversations we had had about death and what really happens to a soul after death--something I was still thinking about as I walked the beach that next day, so different than the day before, with the sun and the waves and the birds just resting off the shore. And I thought, yes, maybe we do turn to our affairs, but don't we turn to them with an even greater appreciation and renewed gusto for life itself? Doesn't death in fact teach us something about life? About its fragility, about its remarkable essence? So the world goes on the day after saying good bye to our dear friend, but not as usual--as extraordinary.