In Memory of a Cousin

The seeds of memory are planted in the next generation when we share our stories.  This past week, my cousin died.  Over an evening Zoom wake thirty-one cousins and many aunts and uncles plus fourty or so friends feasted on memories and the faces of cousins we’d not seen in years, and the years fell away.  I don't have a particular story, but I remember my cousin, and my wedding pictures include him and his sister dancing up a storm.

The numbers were indicative of our cousin’s love of faith, his family, chili, music, crabbing,* Texas, the marsh and the beach.  Too soon for them, too soon for us, too soon, too soon, too soon, but Ben Hall’s life revealed his cramming of everything into everything, except beans in the chili.  

We should laugh more, we should feast more, and we should share stories more often than we do, for reasons other than someone no longer can create stories for us to tell.  We should listen more, we should look more, we should seek each other’s faces more often than when convenient, more often than ordinary life encourages.  

It’s so rare, and yet we somehow forget, that each of us is singularly rare, singular to the universe, created by God for the universe, for all of us to love.   The testimony of a life is all the stories of love, all the friends, all the people who reveal how much of that rareness has been seen and discovered by the universe.What a treasure given by God to us, for us to meet, to know, to feast with, and to wait in joyful hope for seeing again one day.  One of the gifts even of this time, of a time of grief, is the coming together and remembering if only for that moment, while the world never stops, even though we don't understand why the world doesn't stop, when someone dies, we stop. Stopping is important. Stopping makes us remember, there are important stories we need to be telling, need to be hearing, need to be living, that will get lost if we don't stop and pay attention. Remember to keep making the stories because you want those for the long haul. They're like warm fires on a cold night when the world feels like one long winter. It warmed to see their faces, to hear their voices, and to hear their stories. Thank you for the stories Ben, we will miss you until everyone is telling stories about us. Every moment here is a gift, and a reminder of that what is to come, is even better. Here;s one of his songs.

*Thanks to Danny for the correction, Ben loved to crab and went to LaBelle armed with a camera, not a gun.