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<\/a><\/strong> I used this text on New Year\u2019s Sunday. I said it\u2019s a remarkable thing to wish someone Happy New Year because it only takes a second for your life to be totally changed or totally ended. In a year full of seconds, anything can happen at any second. It only takes a second for irresistible, inevitable cir\u00adcum\u00adstan\u00adces to occur. We have no choice in our being born and we have little or no choice when we\u2019re going to die and in between we think we control a lot more than we do. So that\u2019s what I said. Little did I know that in two months the reality of that would kick the stuffing out of me.<\/p>\nThe Apostle Paul asked, \u201cWhere, O Death, is your sting?\u201d I can tell you. It\u2019s right here in this room. It\u2019s in this dagger of grief thrust through my heart. David was too young to die. My mom shouldn\u2019t have to bury two sons or me two brothers. Sue shouldn\u2019t be a widow this soon nor Sam, Hannah, Rachael and Rebecca without a father. But I know this isn\u2019t the last word. God\u2019s heart was the first to break when David died.<\/p>\n
This is why I find such comfort in this line from the Apostles\u2019 Creed: \u201cI believe in the resurrection of the body.\u201d \u00a0I have no idea of what a resurrected body looks like. Jesus gave us a few hints after his resurrection, but nothing definitive. C.S. Lewis said if we were to see our loved ones in their resurrected state, we would be tempted to worship them. This is my hope for David\u2014that he is whole and healthy and vital and alive in Christ. The Christian hope is that we shall be recognizable and known. Our particularity, our individuality, our distinctiveness will remain and live on forever with God. All that makes us uniquely, wonderfully, powerfully who we are will be present. We will be wildly embraced in love and fully known by God and others in all our wonder and wackiness<\/p>\n
He always gave me the top bunk which I thought was weird because that was the coolest bed. At the dinner table he wanted me to sit with my back to the dark hall. When we were older I asked him why. He matter of factly told me that if the Boogie man came he would get me first on the top bunk while he got away or if the Boogie man came out of the dark and nabbed me at the kitchen table David could escape out the family room door. And I thought he was being altruistic. We went through the rise and fall of girlfriends together. On one occasion at UNH when a relationship was on the skids, I crawled into bed on a Friday night feeling sorry for myself. Shortly thereafter I heard a pounding on the door and David waltzed with a couple of friends and said, \u201cNorman, get up. We\u2019re going to have some fun.\u201d I was his best man in his wedding and he in mine, so we sorted it out in the end with the two wonderful women we both married. We logged hundreds of miles in the White Mountains together and spent a Thanksgiving at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. I remember waking up with the tent wall 8 inches in front of our noses as a storm came through the Canyon like a locomotive. I remember watching mice run around the top of our pan lids, building fires\u00a0in the pouring rain, and leaving the keys in the car we left at the trail head and not having them when we got to the other car at the end of the trip.<\/p>\n David reinvented himself at least three times. He started out inseminating cows all over Vermont. He had the highest percentage of conceptions (88%). He told me it was time to go when he inseminated a Jersey with Holstein semen. He started his own painting business and when the bloom went off that lily he and Perrin took up rock and ice climbing. Later, he pursued photography as witnessed by the delightful display of his work here which gives us a look into his gentle, kind and loving soul.<\/p>\n After he was let go from Highland House, a job he had at UNH, Sue sent him down to visit Peggy and me when we were living in Washington, DC. I took him to the Smithsonian and found him inspecting the wainscoting. I asked him what he was doing. \u201cChecking out the paint job,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n So many memories. Spent summers at Lake Winnipesaukee with our cousin Donald and good friend Judy Deene, \u00a0catching Cray fish, building models, reading comic books, listening to 45s, and going swimming as soon as the ice broke up in April. Becoming father\u2019s together. Taking my dad to a Red Sox game in his wheel chair. Teaching Nathan and Sam the love of backpacking together. And too many lasts. Our wonderful last Thanksgiving together. Our last hike together up Mt. Kearsage last August. Our last bro hug in the hospital. I\u2019ll miss our phone conversations. He\u2019d pick up and say, \u201cHello-oh.\u201d And I\u2019d say, \u201cDavid.\u201d And he\u2019d say, \u201cNorman.\u201d And we\u2019d talk about the Red Sox or the Pats, about how mom was doing, politics, work, and the kids. I\u2019d ask what Sue was up to and It was Peggy\u2019s and my great privilege to walk with David and Sue these past five weeks through their \u201cvalley of the shadow\u201d at Mass. General. There were so many grace-filled moments. Call it serendipity or call it the providence of God. We \u201cjust happened\u201d to be there when they got the news that the bone marrow transplant hadn\u2019t taken. We \u201cjust happened\u201d to be there when they got the news that the MDS had morphed into Leukemia. We \u201cjust happened\u201d to be there with their dear friends the Gould\u2019s the night David decided to try another round of chemo. We laughed so hard when he told us stories we had never heard before. And Peggy went down the morning Sue and the kids decided to take him home. Those were bittersweet times of long talks in the cafeteria, of prayers, of laughs and hugs. The bonds of our love grew richer and deeper.<\/p>\n During David\u2019s last days I asked him how it was with his soul. \u201cMy soul?\u201d he said. \u201cIt is well with my soul.\u201d I wanted to be sure so I continued. \u201cWhere is God in all this for you?\u201d \u201cRight here with me.\u201d \u201cReally?\u201d I said, \u201cPalpably present?\u201d \u201cOh yea, right here.\u201d \u201cI\u2019m not afraid to die.\u201d \u201cBut I\u2019d feel gypped.\u201d \u201cI don\u2019t feel that way. I\u2019m grateful for all that I\u2019ve had.\u201d And I\u2019m the minister. I\u2019m supposed to say that stuff. So that is the emotion I carry with me this day, along with the penetrating grief; a deep, deep gratitude for the 57 years we had David with us. It was too short, but this I also know with my whole heart, as did David:<\/p>\n I will miss you so much.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0Norman B. Bendroth, his brother There’s a time for everything and a season for every activity under heaven: a time to be born and a time to die…a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear … Continue reading <\/a>And David certainly had his share of wonder and wackiness, didn’t he? We shared a room all through high school and the top floor of a house after college. You get to know someone pretty well over the years. I remember things like David as an outfielder in Pee Wee league. A long fly ball was hit to him. He circled under it around and around. We expected him to drop it like every other kid, but he caught it! I went nuts. Later my father told Dave, \u201cYou know who was most excited about you catching that fly? Your brother.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/a> he\u2019d tell me: \u201cOh, she\u2019s goin\u2019 Mach 5 with her hair on fire.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/a>\u201cI consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us\u2026For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor ruler, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.\u201d<\/p>\n