Today was the funeral service for my old friend Jeremy.  I wrote about him two weeks ago. Feel free to go back and read it in case you wondered who he was to me: Jeremy.  It was a lovely service filled with more friends than I could have imagined one person to have.  But here we all were, gathered together to say a final goodbye.  The stories and speeches were touching.  The photos shared showed a man full of life.  The hardest part for me was hearing his 11 year old daughter speak of her father.  The courage she possessed to speak about her loss and share a couple of stories was impressive as well as heart wrenching.

Seeing some old familiar faces was nice, but awkward.  I suppose that’s normal for a funeral.  You want to share good stories of your own life and what has happened over the years, but you slow it down and find there is no easy way to talk with those who you once knew.  Bringing people together over a loss is difficult.  But our friend, Jeremy, was a fun loving and out going person.  Smiling today seemed ok to do.  

May you be at peace my friend.

The other celebration of life today was the celebration of a new born child.  

Another friend of mine gave birth to one of the most beautiful baby boys I have ever seen. Not including my own son.  (I still have parental biased going on.)  Gage was welcomed into this world early this morning by his mother Jen, father Greg, and big sister Emma.  Mom was doing so well, they discharged her from the maternity ward late this afternoon.  Ok, maybe it was more like Jen said, “We’d like to go home now, thanks for helping with my baby.”
Originally I was going to head to the hospital immediately following the memorial service.  But because they headed home so quickly, my wife and I decided to stop by their home and take a peek before dinner.

Seeing two factions of what life is in one day is humbling.  It made me realize that life starts and ends rather quickly.  From an old friend of twenty years, to a baby not even twelve hours old- both will mean something special to me.  

You can go through life sometimes not realizing who you’ve touched along the way.