Bacon, Old Friends, Memories, and Priorities

Bacon, Old Friends, Memories, and Priorities

Through my work with Franciscans I have found many friends in the homeless community and a few of them were active in my thoughts this morning.

After arriving home from a Forestry and Real Estate trip to the Northwoods early this morning, my wife asked me what I wanted for breakfast and Bacon and Eggs were a tasty choice.

While enjoying a slice of tasty bacon a couple of friends who have both passed on this year came to mind and a little tiff that they had.  A dispute that seemed so important to them and somewhat trivial to me, as disputes often are when watched from the outside rather than as a party to the argument.

For months I would hear complaints from one of them about the other taking too much bacon at the Saturday morning breakfast hosted by another church group at our Franciscans Downtown facility.

I never took it as seriously as they did, often smiling and suggesting that we either get more bacon so that there will be more to go around or eliminate bacon from the menu.  Neither solution seemed to suit their needs for a solution, yet the next week I would hear the same complaints.

Had any of us known that their time was so short perhaps we would have broken the bank and splurged on bacon every day.

A few months later we got word that one of these dear friends was in the hospital with Sepsis, with no hope for recovery, four days later we were saying our last good byes to this friend as the doctors removed the respirator and let him drift off.

Not long after this the second dear friend was diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer, and despite an amazing struggle to make the rest of his life remarkable, he also drifted off nine months later.

The last few months he was unable to eat bacon or much of anything other than shakes, we no longer talked of bacon, rather the subject was more directed toward making the most of the now, leaving a legacy of a better world, and looking forward to meeting his maker.

It's hard to keep track of the number of amazing friends that we have lost in the past few years, I miss them all.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

This morning it was bittersweet to feel the emotions and memories come forward while biting into a slice of bacon.

If these and other friends are looking down from Heaven this morning, I hope they know how much they are missed and the lives they have touched.