To Everything There is a Season

A time to live, a time to die...

Ok, so I acknowledge that none of us are gonna get out of this world alive, but golly, we have had two friends pass away in the past month. 

The first, RB, as his daughter put it in his obituary, was "the innocent victim of  a high speed police chase" - he simply was in the wrong place at the wrong time.


RB loved music and when he bought a small cafe in downtown Bellingham around 20 years ago, he decided to give it a Coffee House atmosphere on Friday nights and have live music.  The Shepherd & I spent many Friday evenings there - listening to music, or, in my case, performing it - for a while, my friend Nancy & I had a duet going - we called ourselves "The Rusty Sisters" - She played stand up bass and I played my 12 string guitar and sang the songs we played.  We didn't practice much, hence the name, - we were just a little bit "rusty" - but we had a great time, got tips and all the cookies & coffee that we could eat.

And met a lot of nice people - and got to know RB.  But people's lives change, and RB sold the cafe.  So we didn't see him much any more.  Imagine our delight when he showed up at our church one Sunday morning.  He had gotten to know one of our members and began coming to church with her - then, sadly, he took a job in another state and we hadn't seen or heard from him in several years.  Until last month when we got the news of the accident and his death. 

In many ways,  - since RB was no longer "in our radar" so to speak, our life will go on without him.  But the world has lost a good guy.  Rest in peace RB.



Then last Friday morning, one of my co-workers came up to my desk - "Did you hear that LS died? - He fell out of his truck & hit his head" 

"Well, where did you hear that?" I asked.  "It was on Facebook", he said. 

All right - I have to do a little rant here...

Facebook - a friend of my sister calls it "Nosybook" and I have refused to cave.  I do not have a Facebook page, and don't intend on getting one - but I will admit, it is kind of hard to come up with the kind of news that floats around on FB, and not all of it is true, so I finally decided to call his ex, and yes, he had passed away, but he'd had a heart attack. - And these "Facebook Friends" had announced his passing to the world even before some of his family members knew about it.  Kind of rude, I thought.  Oh, well, I guess that's the unsocial part of social media. 

When I thought about it, I realized that I've known LS for almost 35 years - We weren't "friends with benefits" (although I wouldn't have turned him down) we were good friends - he was always there with a ready smile and the best big hugs you have ever gotten.

When he was married, his wife had cancer, twice - I was one of the "food ladies" who kept the family fed so they could concentrate on her recovery, and when I had my cancer surgery eight (can it really be 8 ?!) years ago, they were two of my biggest supporters.  She survived, I survived, unfortunately, their marriage didn't. 

But he stayed in touch - he'd stop by my office once in a while - always with that ready smile and that wonderful big hug.  And, darn it,  in less than a month, the world has lost another great guy. 

Rest in peace LS. 


So, as the saying goes, "to everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven"

And if there is music there, those two boys will be in the front row -


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