A time be born, a time to die… When my brother in law died nearly 3 years ago, I sang those words at his memorial service. “To everything,[turn, turn, turn] there is a season [turn, turn, turn] and a time to every purpose under heaven.”
Today as we were out running errands, the Byrds sang Turn, Turn, Turn to me. I know it was the right thing to do, back in October of 2017, to choose that song and sing it, no matter how difficult it was at the time. Today, is all rushed back at me and I sat in the car and very nearly cried. The sadness was overwhelming me and it was joined by a bit possibly anger, or maybe just chagrin: the song will forever bring me back to that day in church, to that time of sadness, to that year, that for my family was as bad or worse than 2020 has been for the world. How dare those emotions hang their hat on that melody and those words!
I always think I’m done with the grief. If I count my mother’s cousin, and someone that was a more remote family member, I lost 5 family members in 7 months. In the middle of that, I lost one of my dogs (I had watched him being born, I held him as he died); This on the heels of a year which sported a vacation to Hawaii cut short by abroken leg, building a new house and selling a home where we had lived for 30+ years and a spouse who had a run-in with colon cancer and said brother-in-law’s first cancer. I mostly am done, but it just jumps up and grabs me when I least expect it.
Life is good. I know that. To everything there is a season — a time to sow and a time to reap, a time to be born and a time to die, a time for war and a time for peace. And if I continue to listen — How can I keep from singing?