It makes sense to bring out the balloons and cake on an anniversary. It is easy to celebrate the birth of a much loved child, or a commitment made before God. Gotcha days, too, when a baby is adopted, or even the start of a terrific job. 

 

But what happens when we pause to commemorate a death?

 

A group of people recently traveled great distances to visit the place of a tragic accident thirty years ago. All of them feel interwoven by the loss, and the fragility of life. Their bodies have graduated from those youthful physiques that take on twenty miles without consequences. With only three days together, snatched from the treadmills of careers and responsibilities, they arrived open hearted. 

 

Carrying their backpacks, like a load of questions, they hoofed it into the mountains. The vast skies, and eagles overhead provided answers, not with logic exactly but the kind of breaking open that happens when we stand in the presence of loss. Without knowing details, I feel safe assuming that each of them has stumbled over the years, lost their way, and found it again. Maybe not the footpath they had pictured, but one that leads to places they never expected. 

 

There was a lot of laughing. How is that possible? The event they were honoring was enormously painful. There was no laughing that day. It was the end of a life as they knew it. And yet thirty years has a way of softening even the most devastating changes, giving us a view that only happens at seven thousand feet.