Delay

The ticking of the clock sounds different, but then nothing's quite the same. The feel of the house around you--our home, our new home--is altered; there's somehow less luster, less thrill. The glory of a warm spring day is less joyous. I'm somehow less excited right now to end another school term, and far less interested in doing the hard work it takes to finish.

Everything's changed.

The only headline we could find yesterday said it this way:

Fatal 3-car crash delays interstate traffic near Lyndon Station.

The accident held up traffic along an otherwise non-descript spot on Interstate 94 for three hours while the site was cleared. Travelers going west found themselves bound in traffic that wasn't moving at all, not one bit, which had to be irritating. Meetings were missed, I'm sure, reunions postponed. No one arrived on time.

The delay was the story. There was a fatality, by the way--the story didn't mention who because next of kin. . .well, you know. Besides, he wasn't a local man, just another traveler in the interstate's constant stream. In truth, there may been a dozen like him across the face of the country yesterday.

But this one just wasn't just a fatality. This one was my brother-in-law. He was family. He was a grandpa from Georgia who, with his wife, my sister, was on the way to visit kids and grandkids in the Twin Cities, on the way to celebration.

He was a teacher, an educator, a Christian school administrator in Wisconsin, in Florida, in Alabama, and in Maryland--and a good one. He was a man who spent too much of his precious retirement (his wife used to jibe) helping other Christian schools find good fits when they needed a leader.  You might say he never stopped working for education, for Christian education.

He was one of six brothers, and he wasn't the first to die, nor the first to be killed in a car accident. He lost a brother when he was just a kid.

He was tough back then. He was mighty tough, and those who went to high school with him still claim that if back then he was coming down the hall, other kids found ways to make room.

But he went to college and everything changed because ideas stirred him greatly. He campaigned for Eugene McCarthy in 1968, took off from school, and hit the streets a state away. He fell in love with my sister, was Dad to three wonderful and talented kids who are, as we speak, in the maelstrom of grief no one can really share. Their mother's injuries are not life-threatening. Even though it was only yesterday they were on their way to birthday parties, she has no memory of the accident.

I suppose we all delay traffic when we pass away, but this fatality is more than simply the one who held up travelers yesterday on a Wisconsin interstate. This is one I knew. This is one I loved, a gracious and loving husband to my sister, a beloved father to three kids. Five grandkids will somehow have to be told they won't see him again real soon. I wouldn't know how to do that, but someone is doing it right now. Lord, bless those parents and their kids. They're all little, but somehow old enough to understand when he will no longer return.

Bless us all in our loss, in our losses, Lord. Each of us is so much more than a delay. We're your children.

Bless those grandkids, bless my sister, bless three kids who find themselves fatherless.

Nothing's quite the same, Lord. Bless us all. And receive Larry Kooi bountifully. He was always one of yours.