Icky In Between

When you make a cup of tea, there is this time when the tea has filtered through at the ideal ratio and the water has cooled to the temperature where the sip is hot enough you breathe in slightly but not burning.  It's brief.  Lasting only a couple of minutes.  You have to fully drink it in during those minutes.  Because then the tea can turn too strong and the water keeps cooling until soon it's not perfection anymore.  It's cold tea.  But not iced tea.  It's the icky in between.  

The perfect time is brief.  Lasting only a couple of minutes.  

When you make a life, the perfect times are brief too.  Lasting for a day or a week or a month or maybe even a season, but inevitably something comes along to bring forth the icky in between.  

A strong man left the Earthly world this week.  A guy I have never known to not be in my life; he was the big brother.  The cool brother.  The one who if he played with you, you couldn't help but beam a little.  After all, he was the big brother.  It's inconceivable to me a family should have to go through the painful process of losing a child or a sibling more than once, but it happened this week.  Daryl and Jo, the parents who always welcomed any and all of us into their home and family, lost their oldest son at the young age of thirty-three.  There is no sane reasoning for why this could be happening again and I feel like I want to take away their hurt with every passing second and every hug, being all too aware it's not possible.

To know there are two little beings left without a dad is a place where I can't go.  There are no words.  Their dad will live on through their accomplishments and their shining.  He has to.   

Darick joined his sister Missi and somehow in someway Wade, the remaining sibling, will keep going.  I can only hope he knows how much we all are lifting him and feeling with him and for him.  And when I slid two pieces of pepperoni beef pizza onto a paper plate for him on the first night of the news, I hope he knows I was trying to slide my love over to him too.  Because how does one know what to do during the ickiest of icky in between.  I don't.  So I bring pizza and give hugs and pray.  

As I opened the door of the house into the dense fog and haze of that night, I walked next to my own brother.  It felt right to do that with him.  To leave together.  As we parted ways at our vehicles a glance was shared between us.  Followed by, "Life is short Amy."

It is.  Short and fleeting and unexplainable and fragile.  So make your life a life and drink in the cup of tea fully.  Drink it in.  For all that it has to offer to you and all you have to give back to it.