October 6, 2021

I Wonder

we learned about a death at church last week

two deaths, actually, the first some days before

and Sunday’s service was changed accordingly

to speak well of the dead and of their family

and we learned of God’s comfort in any trial

rather than starting a study on Lamentations

(my wife and I giggled at that, on the way home

thinking that the pastor had made a good call)

but unmentioned by me to any and all was this:

Sunday felt, I don’t know, just a little ‘off’ I guess

with all this concentration on this recent death

when there had been another just a day earlier

of the man who managed building the building

I wondered how those who also grieved the first

or the many deaths before, felt at this de-emphasis

when one of us grieves, we share in their grief

yet I felt we grieved more on Sunday for the one

that we had grieved before for all the others

as if ‘mother’, ‘wife’, ‘children, ‘deacon’, ‘sudden’

trumped the value of other dead equally loved