What pain

Our neighbors' daughter Johanna went to college today.

Bern talked with Naomi about it.

What pain, when your kid goes away and you know they're gone forever.

She's a Freshman at Sacred Heart University. A wonderful school. And she'll be fine.

But dropping off flesh of your flesh at college is a really life altering event.

 We did it twice. Hard, hard, harder than hard to do that.

The world shifts on its axis. Never to rotate the same again.

Zoe, Johanna's much younger sister took it very hard, Naomi told Bern.

I've watched them together for a decade--Zoe is a little off-kilter, brilliant but awkward--and Johanna always made her laugh, made her 'at ease', made her 'at home' in herself. Of course she took it hard.

Passages are hard, hard, harder than hard. And passages are what make life Life.

It's what we do on this odd journey from birth to death. Things change and shift and alter. Just like that.

I got an email from the daughter of a woman who worked with me at St. John's in Waterbury 25 years ago. The email began, "you may not remember my mother..."

Of course I did. I remember most everybody, just not the years I knew them--lost in linear time am I.

My friend's husband died and her children wanted a 'religious person' at the graveside. Death is the biggest passage of them all. And children not raised in a church wanted a 'religious person' at their dad's grave. We had a great conversation, considering the circumstances, and, of course I'll be at that graveside with them.

Passages make us look to our souls.

And the pain is real, each time....Realer than real.

And make life "Life".