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Sometimes you become acquainted with someone and you just know, somehow, that there is something so very special about that person, something that's going to stick with you. Even after a minute or ten, even after several years.
I met Mark Palmer at Vic's in Columbus, in the couch corner near the window where I was going to enjoy some gossip with Lara. They were friends; I clung to their pleasant conversation of serious topics and realized immediately that this man was Enlightened, in some way, on some level, in my presence.
We had a few more run-ins in the next year or so, all revolving around Lara, wherein I met his beautiful wife, Jennifer, and their darling infant son, Micah, who once gave me a hickey in the crook of my elbow. Through chit-chat at Lara's when the four of us (Lara, me, Mark and Jennifer) helped pack up a friend and place her into a large truck for a new adventure across the universe, I learned about his ministry, his worship community, and more importantly, his passion. He was quite imposing then, much taller than me and so sturdy on his faith.
The summer that Jen and I moved in together, still in Columbus, Mark lost his vibrant, beautiful, and gorgeous wife to an aggressive form of cancer. She was 26, and I was so shattered by the realism of death and its triumph over beauty that I could not get myself up for the funeral. I felt awful about my absence but I just couldn't do it. It was almost as if going to the services would be my admission that this could happen to me, or to My Jennifer. And to leave behind such a beautiful little baby...
Two years later, Mark Palmer was remarried to another lovely soul that I never got the privilege to meet and he had just been diagnosed with cancer himself. What are the cruel odds of such a thing, a man who is my age who lost his wife to cancer two years prior? I've been following his battle, physical and spiritual, through this time, feeling helpless and disconnected. Heck, we were nothing more than brief acquaintances!
This morning, Mark Palmer ended his battle so that he could be with his savior. I honestly believe the world lost something beautiful this morning, something that simply cannot be replaced. My heart aches for a man I hardly knew, the woman he's joining in heaven, a woman I've never met, and a 4-year-old boy who sucked on my arm in Patti's backyard before he could ever possibly remember such things.
Peace and praises be to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
palmerlp and all the people and things he touched and turned to gold.
I met Mark Palmer at Vic's in Columbus, in the couch corner near the window where I was going to enjoy some gossip with Lara. They were friends; I clung to their pleasant conversation of serious topics and realized immediately that this man was Enlightened, in some way, on some level, in my presence.
We had a few more run-ins in the next year or so, all revolving around Lara, wherein I met his beautiful wife, Jennifer, and their darling infant son, Micah, who once gave me a hickey in the crook of my elbow. Through chit-chat at Lara's when the four of us (Lara, me, Mark and Jennifer) helped pack up a friend and place her into a large truck for a new adventure across the universe, I learned about his ministry, his worship community, and more importantly, his passion. He was quite imposing then, much taller than me and so sturdy on his faith.
The summer that Jen and I moved in together, still in Columbus, Mark lost his vibrant, beautiful, and gorgeous wife to an aggressive form of cancer. She was 26, and I was so shattered by the realism of death and its triumph over beauty that I could not get myself up for the funeral. I felt awful about my absence but I just couldn't do it. It was almost as if going to the services would be my admission that this could happen to me, or to My Jennifer. And to leave behind such a beautiful little baby...
Two years later, Mark Palmer was remarried to another lovely soul that I never got the privilege to meet and he had just been diagnosed with cancer himself. What are the cruel odds of such a thing, a man who is my age who lost his wife to cancer two years prior? I've been following his battle, physical and spiritual, through this time, feeling helpless and disconnected. Heck, we were nothing more than brief acquaintances!
This morning, Mark Palmer ended his battle so that he could be with his savior. I honestly believe the world lost something beautiful this morning, something that simply cannot be replaced. My heart aches for a man I hardly knew, the woman he's joining in heaven, a woman I've never met, and a 4-year-old boy who sucked on my arm in Patti's backyard before he could ever possibly remember such things.
Peace and praises be to
palmerlp and all the people and things he touched and turned to gold.
