A Huge Loss

Someone I care about died tonight and is in heaven now. I'm a mess. I'm not sure you can really call us friends, because he only knew me as red fish who commented occasionally on his blog. We never exchanged an email, and I have no idea if he ever visited this blog. It doesn't matter.

His blog, Popping Culture, has been one of my five "must reads". He was a pastor who loved ministering to people. He always posted photos of animals doing goofy things. He loved Shakespeare, poetry and art. He was hoping to live to see Spiderman 3. He loved his wife, his dog and his cat. (He had lost a cat, and God had just sent him another.) He made me laugh much more than he made me cry, but he did plenty of both. He fought cancer as long as he could, and never let it define him.

I'll miss you, Dan. Thank you for sharing your life online. I look forward to getting to know you better in heaven some day. Enjoy your new healthy body.

Please pray for his wife Stephanie. She has lost a special guy.

This is a poem he posted July 23, 2005:

Nothing Gold Can Stay
by Robert Frost

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.