No sooner did I post about the Honeymoon with my firm being over, but that I got assigned to a project which I've spent 23 hours working on in the last two days. At least these hours count toward a billable requirement and potential bonus. Still, I wish I could've spent more (meaning "any") of my waking hours today at home.
My thoughts are only marginally on my work, though. Instead, we got a message relayed from the Bishop this evening that our friend Bret Stern, whom I had mentioned in my last post, is fighting for his life tonight at a nearby hospital. As mentioned before, he was in a serious car accident Wednesday morning on his way to work that caused serious head trauma. He's been in an induced coma ever since and on breathing support. Today, apparently, the swelling in his brain got dangerous enough that doctors had to perform an emergency operation to relieve it. He is now apparently hour to hour. The Bishop had asked previously that we fast this Sunday for Bret and has family, and in this latest message asked that we begin immediately if we had not already done so.
I got this latest news while at work, and gratefully I was the only one in the office because I could not hold back tears. I do not want to think of the consequences of Bret's death on his family, and what that might mean for his wife and child, yet I find I cannot help but to think of them. I started to realize at the office that my fervent prayers for Bret to recover, hoping it might be the Lord's will, were based far more on my worries and fears for his wife and child than for him. These are the kinds of situations we never think to hard about, both because they seem to0 remote and too frightening a possibility. And yet they came swiftly and without warning the Stern family and it cannot be undone and they face terrible possibilities.
With this tragedy so close to us, it has certainly dampened our holiday spirits and desire to drink in the elements of the Season. Of course, I'm still sitting in front of our decorated, lighted (and fake) tree, and some select Christmas CDs viritually carried me through the workday at the office, but I can hardly find reason to be merry when I know our friends cannot be now. When I do feel inclinations to merriment, guilt sets in and I feel as though I have no business being upbeat when those so close to us must wade through anguish, tears, and desperate waiting. I am much more contented in these times to be solemn, perhaps because it makes me feel that in some measure I am contrinbuting and showing my caring for them by reserving my thoughts to worry about their situation.
To what extent my inclinations are proper I can't exactly say, though I know we covenant to "Mourn with those that more, and comfort those that stand in need of comfort." I guess that's why I was suprised the other evening when another friend of mine found my inclinations to be entirely foreign to him.
Some reassurance came tonight when Michelle, unsolicited told me she'd been struggling with similar feelings. We do feel a distinct obligation to reserve our joy until our friends might also be merry. And think too we're anxious to be able to represent to them (and also likely to ourselves) that we have not forgotten them or their situation. Our minds (at least Michelle's and mine) just seem programmed that way.
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