Today I also embraced a good friend who had just laid an infant daughter in her final resting place. Doctors had given her minutes to live. She lived for 13 glorious days. During those days, she and her sweet family cherished the simple things in life that matter the most.
Today I listened as her father recounted the miracle of her birth: how a priesthood blessing and the innocent faith of her tiny sisters breathed life into her lifeless body. And how the minutes turned into hours, and hours into days, and the days into weeks. And as the world held its breath, a family suspended in time relished in the simpleness of life, and of love, and of faith. In the stillness of birth and the stillness of death, they learned to experience life undiluted by meaningless complications.
Today I wept as I watched a young family do the hardest thing they’ll ever have to do in this life --- to say goodbye to their child. And an image flashed in my mind – of my son in his red swimming suit - racing for the water, grinning ear to ear, as he first exp
erienced the beauty of the ocean. And how beautiful my wife looked as she helped him through his initial trepidation of the water. And how the ridges of sand felt on my feet – and how the tiny rippling waves lapped around our family as we waded in the warm water. And how that moment: unmanufactured, simple, and innocent, will be forever burned in my mind.For my friend’s sweet daughter Melody, life was a gift. For the rest of us, life is a choice. We can choose to live a life watered down by cynicism, distraction, scheming, and selfishness. Or we can take life straight up: pure, innocent, and simple. And the true tragedy in life isn’t the death of our bodies, but rather the loss of life through the squandering of precious moments on things of little or no worth.
Though Melody’s tiny lifeless body was laid to rest today, I felt her larger-than-life spirit, and the urgency of her message: that life isn’t to be tamed through the planning and engineering of artificial joy, but rather, life is a collection of simple moments, some filled with joy, and some filled with excruciating pain. And it’s those simple moments in life that matter the most.
