The Beauty & Pain of Death

This week we tasted death in all of it's ugliness and beauty wrapped into an ending, and a beginning.
And questions were asked and anger was thrown at...no one and nothing, because there is nothing to throw the anger to. Yet it reigned heavy and bold and pushed out because it had to go somewhere. It bubbled up and over and was too much to keep inside.
And tomorrow we will bury a body that never saw the outside world, that was never physically held while breathing and seeing and living. Instead it's soul made the easy travel from womb to Father's arms and so, it has only known the greatest of warmth.
Pain, but beauty in knowing. The greatest beauty of all:  this baby will never know any pain.
Still: this is how he was born and this is how he will always be known. Still and silent and yet beautiful, complete with resemblances and a birth-date and a name.
Elijah Lee.
He was loved and held, although already gone. He was cherished and he will remain cherished until the glorious meeting day that will one day come on heaven's peaceful shores. He will never be forgotten, and he will always be loved.
Today he plays ball with Pappaw, and smiles and laughs and runs while his parents struggle with questions and anger, and mourn, and wonder 'why me, why us?'.
And life goes on, the world keeps turning, and we are left with the bitter-sweet taste of what life and death really are. We are left to pick up the pieces and try to force them to create a complete picture although some are missing and they don't all seem to quite fit.
And we ask for our friends and family to pray and to understand and to be a rock when the world is sinking below our feet. And so I ask you: to be our rock, to remember us in prayer, and to help us get through this terrible time.
I will not meet my nephew here on this earth, but I will know his face when I see him in heaven one day. And I will hug him and kiss his cheeks and tell him how much he was loved, and how hard it was for his parents to let him go, and yet, how we remembered in this terrible time how much beauty can be found in the pain and hurt of death.
And how we could also celebrate the knowledge that he never knew the pain of this world, but traveled from warmth of womb to warmth of Father's arms in an instant. And his entire existence was nothing but peace.