Marcus Aurelius, Certain Death & Johnnie Cochran

Pray and Not Give Up
-Luke 18:1

This morning my mother recieved a sad, but unsurprising phone call. She owns a financial service company, whereby she provides investments, insurance, mortgages for her clients. Today a client called. This afternoon mom has to meet her client to complete her son's death claim.
Death calls are normal in this house.
Out of eighteen years of such things, we have seen and heard it all.

Last night a twenty-nine year old man with two daughters died violently. Someone(s) gunned the house he and a friend visited last night.
No one knows why.
No one knows who.
No ones knows anything, because there were no survivors.
But there are grieving mothers, looking to my mother for financial solace.

I think about her day and I imagine what she will say, what she always says at time like these.
"Pray and not give up." (Luke 18:1)

My mother and I don't have a

Steel Magnolias

kind of relationship more like Daughters of the Ya Ya Sisterhood.
We laugh hard.
We argue hard.
We love hard.
It's the Georgia Peach in our blood stream.
We pray hard.

I pray for this man, who died last night. I probably seen him before, probably have been to his house. His father died last September.
Yes. I remember now.

He's four years younger than me with twice as many daughters, strong, handsome, healthy. I'm half of those things. Yet, I am still here.

If you know me you would be surprised to know that my two favorite movies are day and night, opposing, dichotomies: The Sound of Music and The Gladiator--the one starring Russell Crowe. One movie hails the possibility and beauty in living and the other hails the certainty and beauty of dying.
I cry when I watch both movies. I fizzle somewhere existing in the middle caught up somehow by what I feel inside.
I am caught up today, because this young man died yesterday...the same days as Johnnie Cochran, esq. One young, in his prime, and clueless:the other, young in spirit, in his prime, and filled with illumination.

I want to be the latter. I pray to be the latter.

But in the meantime I need to do something profound with my life.
I need to raise my daughter in the best way I can.
I need to spend more time writing the stories that I carry inside.
I need to live with a big heart like Fraulein Maria and Maximus.
I need to pray and not give up.

What say you?

Writing to see what the end gon' be
Dee

Untitled: Butter Me Not Faith Wordcount: 1000