Remembering Eric on his anniversary

Four years ago today, I was sitting in my car at a traffic light when my phone rang. It was my mother. She asked where I was—presumably so she could make sure I was in a place where I could hear and receive bad news. But she was too upset to wait to tell me. My brother-in-law Eric had died.

“I’ll be right there,” I said. I hung up and changed lanes to start driving toward my parents’ house. As I drove, I was hit by waves of grief—for my sister Maureen, for each of her children, for Eric’s brother and mother, for our whole family.

It was too much to comprehend.

It still is.

Each year, the anniversary of Eric’s death hits me a little differently, but it also brings me right back to that moment when I first experienced the sharp, confusing pain of sudden loss. Grief rises and recedes, becoming more intense at expected and unexpected moments. But you never fully set it down. It’s always there.

I don’t grieve due to a lack of faith. I believe in eternal life—and I know God loves us deeply and ultimately wants to bring us each home to be with Him. I pray I will make it to heaven one day and be with all the people I love that I’ve lost over the years. I truly believe that will happen.

And I have so many memories of the people I love to hold onto—and celebrate and cherish. But I can be deeply grateful for those memories and still ache that the people we love aren’t here with us on earth.

On this side of heaven, I wish we could still spend time with Eric, the beloved, brilliant husband of my sister and the loving, proud father of his incredible sons and daughters.

I wish my children had more memories of their uncle, who loved them and was fascinated by each of their achievements—from the toddler eating three bananas in a row to the elementary school student just starting to discover the trumpet.

I miss the insightful conversations we always had with Eric, who had a wonderful intellectual curiosity and an astonishing depth and breadth of knowledge. He and my husband could fall into conversations that continued late into the night on our beach vacations together.

There are so many memories. Today, I will share some memories of Uncle Eric with my children. I’ll help them remember how loving and funny and intelligent he was—and how proud he was of them. I’ll remind them that even when we lose people we love, we never really lose them. We hold them close in so many ways, and we can still be connected to them in prayer.

As I recall that shocking call from my mother four years ago, I find myself remembering another phone call that changed my life—the night Eric called me to tell me he had just asked my sister for her hand in marriage. He called me himself, making sure that he communicated the news to me personally.

My impression of Eric at that moment was that he cared so much about delivering this news directly to me himself—and that he was also very much in love with Maureen. I hadn’t met Eric at that point, and that was the first time I heard his voice. If I close my eyes, I can still hear it now, his deep, rich baritone that might break into song at any moment.

What a blessing to have known someone so extraordinary and so full of love.

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