Amy Jenna AJ Abby Kara
Exactly one year ago we took Aaron to the airport to catch a flight back to Mount Bachelor Academy near Bend, Oregon. Aaron had just completed a fabulous one week home visit which included tremendous family time, purchasing a guitar, a suit and attending the DeForest Homecoming football game. Aaron had no regrets about missing his senior season. We, he and I, built a bon fire in our fire pit and burned his old football practice gear. “That was then Dad, this is now. Football is in the past. I’m responsible for having lost what I lost and I’m not looking back.”
On Saturday night, some of Aaron’s good friends came over to see him before their night out. We wondered how Aaron would feel after they left and he was not able to go along. Aaron went about his business with an attitude of grace packing his things for the morning flight. He was grateful for the girls stopping to see him, and ready to get back to work at school. No regrets. No nostalgia.
Sunday morning Aaron walked through the Dane County Airport terminal dressed in a new suit over a Beatles T-shirt, sandals on his feet, a guitar over one shoulder and a toting a back pack sporting a red, white and blue peace symbol. Aaron had become comfortable being Aaron. He was living in the present.
The process of mourning, as described by the author Andre Comte-Sponville in A Small Treatise on the Great Virtues, is a process of gratitude. Nearly five months into our journey, suffering IS stronger than gratitude as we cry: How awful he should have died! How can we accept this?
Mourning is painful. Difficult. Necessary. And we are assured by Jesus, ancient thinkers, contemporary philosophers, and friends who promise joy returns in spite of everything. The joy glimmers in our lives. We have faith in God that the pulse will glow into brilliance. Not overnight, not one day, but one day and one night stacked atop of one and another. These hours are the foundation on which we take right actions to do right things.
A year ago…five months ago, Aaron was living and breathing the life of a teenager who was not looking to change the world, but to just keep his side of the street clean. Today, Aaron J. Meyer is a spirit of the universe. He may have left the world a slightly better place for having lived. Aaron certainly left more than he took.
Epicurus, a 4th Century Greek philosopher who taught freedom from the fear of death wrote: Sweet is the memory of the departed friend. And gratitude is the sweetness itself, when it becomes joyous.
The Aaron J. Meyer, Foundation will never replace Aaron. It can be an effective instrument of grace. Whether it becomes anything at all is up to you. Someday a recipient of AJM Foundation love my say “How fortunate that Aaron Meyer had lived!”
Cathy, Patrick, and I are grateful to you members of the Aaron J. Meyer Foundation. We are grateful that you exist. Grateful that you live.
Peace and Best Wishes,
Tom, Cathy, and Patrick Meyer
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