Well, that whole not crying at church thing lasted only one week.
Saturday, September 6th, at 7:10 am, my brother-in-law, Tim Fadel, passed away after battling cancer for 4 years. He was 31.
The next day at church, I did cry some, but mainly I felt as if I was in shock. It seemed ridiculous to lose 2 people in less than 2 months.
But then, this last Sunday, our pastor was on a roll reading a collection of probably 20 different verses that are either about the dead in Christ or comfort for those who mourn, etc, and I was sitting there just sobbing. I don't think I have ever cried so hard, sobbed, in church before. Usually, the tears just quietly run down my face, but not this time.
Beth (Brian's sister) is hurting and so are her kids. Beth came to my house today and we spent a few hours together. It was a good time and I was very encouraged by it. We talked a little about Tim's memorial service that was held last Friday. There were around 400 people who came to it. She said that she was surprised at how many people flew to get to the memorial. There were tons of Portland Christian people from lots of different graduating classes. Aaron Scothorn was there too. It was good to see him but I bet it must have been difficult for him to attend.
The memorial was actually a "celebration of life" so there was a slide show of pictures of Tim. He had planned out the whole service before he passed away. He picked the pictures to show, he asked Brian to read a poem that Brian had written about Tim and his skydiving experience last fall, Tim did a video introduction, and he asked his uncle to speak. So, since Tim planned it, there was a lot of humor in the service.
Brian and Beth have both told me that it seemed like Tim would just go on forever being sick. It seemed he would never actually pass away. It was a year ago that he was told his cancer was terminal. In December, he was told that he could pass away any day. In May (?) he was told that he wouldn't make it through the summer. Well, he did. Just barely.
