God, I have a question...or two

I strongly agree with a former pastor who says that his first question when he meets God will be, "Why mosquitos?".

After that issue is settled, my second question will be much more complex and involves the whole "why" of our existence on earth.

My cousin died last week. At only 58. Don had a very rare form of cancer called Waldenstrom's Macroglobulinemia.

Don was perhaps the smartest person I've known and also one who doggedly followed what he believed. He had a free ride to Stanford, but chose not to parlay his education into a lucrative career. He became interested in a movement called "Co-Housing" and worked with that organization for many years. In co-housing, groups of people choose to own their own residences, but live in community with neighbors sharing several meals a week, maintaining common living areas and acting as family to each other. Don and his wife have lived in a co-housing community in California for at least 20 years. As a side-bar to co-housing, Don and his wife were passionate about organic food and healthy lifestyles long before they became mainstream concepts.

Don and his wife traveled in Latin America often until recent years. Without any formal instruction in Spanish, Don just set about to master the language and embarrassed me with his fluency that surpassed mine acquired in more traditional ways. Passionately, they saw the poverty in Guatemala and set about working to help the rural villages. Later passions included astronomy and anything scientific he could lay his hands on, becoming an expert in field after field. Don, however, never drew attention to himself remaining gentle, calm, and positive.

When Don was first diagnosed about ten years ago, he made the disease his business. On the personal front, he found the very best medical care available to him, happily undertook experimental treatments, learned everything possible about his rare disease, exercised avidly and ate carefully. He became active on the board of the Waldenstrom's research foundation...a plus for us as he came to Chicago for board meetings every year or so.

For most of those 10 years, Don lived a pretty normal life, seeming to bounce back from occasional setbacks. Then last November the disease took his sight, in August it took his hearing and much of his feeling. Thinking of Don's active mind cut off from communication was beyond understanding. I rejoice that he is riding his bike and google-ing like crazy again in God's presence.

When someone dies in their prime as Don did, we are so aware of the achievements of their lives. We mourn the future years on earth that will not be.

The day after I heard about Don's death, I attended a memorial for the mother of a friend. I have only know our friend's mother as a very depressed woman in her 90's. At the service, however, her son talked at length about the joyous, faith-filled woman of her younger years.

At my mother's nursing home, I see so many people who no longer are aware of their surroundings, I see people like Mom who have their intellect but struggle with physical woes, I see people who weeks ago seemed totally "with it" beginning to lose "it".

And I try to remind myself that, just as my friend described his younger mother, all these folks have professional and personal histories unknown to me.

We learn from someone like Don whose lifetime achievements are so apparent to us. I fear that too often we are so involved in the struggles of the final years of folks like those at the nursing home that we forget the lessons they, too, taught through their earlier lives and achievements.

And we ask why people die young and why some old people linger for years in sad circumstances.

Someday we'll understand....right after we understand why mosquitos were created.