Loss is coming

My mom's best friend, and a women who's been a fixture in my life for 20+ years, is dying.  This turn of events and rapid decline has been unexpected.  C is 54 years old, my mom's closest friend, the mother of my friend and a cancer patient. Because of the quickness at which this has progressed, I don't have all the details.  She has pneumonia and is in the hospital laboring to breath. It's not appropriate for me to corner the nurses or doctors and have them explain every little detail to me - however bad I want to do it. The details of the ways her body is failing her will come in future conversations, I'm sure.

But for now, I'm watching the life leave her. I'm watching my mom lose her kindred spirit. I'm watching a mother give her daughter permission to let go.  I'm watching a brother thank his sister for loving him so. I'm watching a younger sister wipe the sweat from her older sister's brow.  I'm watching my friend lose his mom at 25 years old.

I've never watched someone die before.  There are no words to describe the layers of sorrow, anger, somberness, holiness, and resolve that are in the room. Everyone of us who knew knows C will carry a loss. Some more than others. It will resonate with us in different ways, but we will all know a new level and association with loss.

I feel the Holy Spirit urging me to observe this pain and remember it well.  Learn from the way C's family carries it and the way this devastation cuts through their hearts and my heart.  He's asking me to remember this clearly because in a few months He's sending me children who will be reeling from loss. They will be drowning in loss. And just like now, I won't know or understand all the details that brought them to this dark place of grief. It might be from a sibling who has passed away, from a parent going to jail or from the experience of being ripped away from the only family they've ever known.

If you're reading this, please pray for C and her family.  The Lord is calling her home and she will leave us soon. She will have no more pain, no more fear.  She will soon be in Heaven, in the front row singing "Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lamb" at the top of her lungs.
And please pray for children in foster care who are experiencing loss that they cannot comprehend.
Thank you.