This is a piece I wish I didn’t have to write.
A dear friend of mine is about to depart from this life. He took a bad fall some weeks ago, and the consequences have proved far worse than anyone could have anticipated. He’s being kept alive just now by artificial means. However, he’s not fully conscious and never will be again in this world.
His name is Joseph Flamini, and only my wife Beth could be dearer to me.
Joe has been an engineer, a physicist, a security entrepreneur, and a law enforcement officer. In the practice of those occupations he’s visited virtually every country in the First World and has amassed an international reputation. For the past thirty years he’s lived in a redoubt near the summit of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, in a compound he built and equipped entirely with his own hands and skills. He spoke many times of the great joy his homestead brought him. “I have my wife and my mountain,” he would say. “What more could I possibly need?”
You’d have to know Joe personally to grasp the full import of that statement. He was so knowledgeable and talented that I’m convinced that he could rebuild Western Civilization – largely out of parts he already has on hand. And we who love him are about to lose him forever.
We would have done anything short of murder to keep Joe with us. But there is nothing we can do. The physicians caring for him are at a loss. They cannot restore him to us, even in a reduced state. His body is so badly damaged that even with the most aggressive possible life support, he has only a day or two left to live.
This is the hardest time for us. The time when love and willingness are impotent. Joe’s future is set beyond human power to alter it.
The Moving Finger writes; and having writ,
Moves on: nor all our piety and wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a line,
Nor all our tears wash out a word of it.
All that remains is to pray.
Godspeed, Joseph. May He clasp you to His bosom, where you belong.
My thoughts and prayers are with you and all who are close to Joseph. He will find peace in his passing. May you all do the same who remain behind and may you have a happy reunion when the time comes.
ReplyDeleteGodspeed, Joseph.
ReplyDeleteI do not know your friend, nor know anything more about him than what you have written today. Nonetheless, I know that from you this is high praise indeed.
ReplyDeleteFor me, faith has often been difficult. The nagging plague of doubts; a constant battle in the mind. But when one of our own faces his time, I can only believe that the universe could not possibly be so wasteful as to left such a man leave it forever. There must be a god, even if only for that purpose alone.
Perhaps this is folly. But whatever, if it is folly, then I accept it for what it is. It is my belief that, though your friend is leaving the bounds of Earth, you will see him again. And that is some small comfort, I hope.
Prayers on the way.
ReplyDeleteBaruch Hashem.
ReplyDeleteA loss for this world.