...when a college crush dies from cancer

I had a large, awkward, disproportionate crush on Seth in college. He was pretty crushworthy: dark hair, blue eyes, and a certain intangible quality that my younger self read as strong and silent. To be honest, I didn't know him terribly well. But my younger self wasn't concerned with a detail like actually knowing him; I was content to nurse my crush on him anyway.

When I found out yesterday that he had passed, I felt a heaviness: for his wife and children, his parents, and for my own self. How does someone my age, with a lovely family, succumb to cancer? I've wondered this same thing several times in recent years: once, when a former fellow Bible study group member lost her husband tragically, leaving her with four kids to raise; once, when a beloved local chiropractor and his young son died in a car accident, leaving behind his wife and three daughters; and once several years ago, when a fellow MOPS mom died after numerous health issues, leaving a husband and three kids. I struggle with this heaviness of mortality. Not the sense of my own mortality necessarily, but the heaviness of the lives we are left to live when those closest to us - in our homes, in our beds - die.

I pray often for friends who have experienced such loss so recently. I sit, looking at my babies run around the house in their pajamas, listening to them tell too many potty jokes at the table, and I look at my husband interacting with them. And I am in awe of the task those going it alone have before them. Raising kids is not easy, even when one has a loving and supportive spouse. My heart absolutely breaks for those people in the throes of building a life together who are abruptly separated when one of them passes on.

As I remember Seth today, his friends and family are remembering him at his memorial service in Austin. I - the woman who was the girl who had an awkward crush on him in college - am not in Austin with those closest to him but will remember him as someone who was kind, funny, and honest. And as often as I remember Seth, I will pray for comfort, peace, grace, and strength for his family as they find their way through grief and learn how to live without him.