Once there was a man.

{photo credit: here}

Rodney's grass is overgrown. And from my house, I can see one lone tulip peaking above wispy green blades. The flower is perfect and brilliant and red. The flower is a sign.

Yesterday, I sat on my porch and watched as Morgan ran back and forth in the yard, barefoot and full of giggles. My home is full of life these days. Except for the miraculous flower, my neighbor's home is not. It is lifeless.

And I think that forever, whenever I look his way, I will always be a little sad.

And so it goes. A letter to a man.

Dearest you, dear neighbor: I have been thinking of you. The pink tree has blossomed next door and the fruit trees are covered in bees and though the sun has been warm and not yet hot, our town is on the brink of bursting into summer. It's beautiful around us - almost heavenly, as spring is surely a miracle coming out of the harsh, 'strangling winter', and we get to witness it each (and every) year. You are missing it, dear neighbor. You are missing the sun. And the bees. I am sad for you. I want to tell you that I'm sad you are missing it. I am sad you are gone.   

In January, my neighbor died. The police came. And cars and cars parked alongside our street and his family huddled in the snow before they were allowed inside.

The ambulence affiliates rushed in, but left much slower.

There was nothing to be done.

I watched as his body left his house one last time. I felt cold.

I spent nights sleepless. I wondered what Rodney's face looked like up close, what his last name was, or when it was that I stopped waving as we passed on the street.

I cried for the stranger that lived next door. And I cried that his life was so lonely, he chose to end it.

If only he had waited for springtime to come. If only he had waited for the sun. And for his little red flower that would have surely bloomed. (And just for him.) If he had called to me from the walk. If I had seen him looking gray. If only I had known. I would have...

In January, when he died, Rodney was forty nine. He had a child my age, a grandson the age of Morgan. He had loved once, and had had a wife, though she left years ago. He had friends. I saw their cars that night. He had a pretty blue house with white shutters and backyard with a hill of grass. Rodney had neighbors that could have helped. Rodney could have had me.

When Rodney died, I had feelings that overflowed. I could do no real explaining. Not to Jared, myself, or paper and pen. What could I, a stranger, have to say that wouldn't sound trivial or dramatic or wallowy? What could a stranger have done to change things or when things couldn't be changed, try to make things better for those he left behind?

All the while, I was thinking of his mother. I was thinking of my son. And about all of the sweetness and all of the bitter in this life. And how we must have both. (I know we must have both.) And if I ask 'why', there aren't answers enough to heal much of anything. There comes to me only feelings. Sweet, comforting feelings that help nourish my faith in 'someday'. And I have found that those feelings can soothe the deepest of aches.

One day all that we know will be much different. And there will be no more darkness. Only light. 

Jesus Christ is the reason for that. He is the one that connects us all (even strangers). And for Him, I am eternally thankful.

I am thankful for a great many things. For life, and even death, and life through death. For winter, and for spring. And for a lone red tulip blooming in the yard of a man I'd like to meet again one day.

There's so much I'd like to say.