(A Lack of) Words for Darold
You know, I've talked before about what grief looks like, and I think it has a lot of faces: it's loud, it's silent, it's dark, it's blinding, it screams and whispers, and comes with cakes and casseroles, whiskey and beers. Sometimes there are so many words. This time, I just don't know what they are. The only ones that come to mind this time are curse words. And hell, maybe that's fitting, because I know what Darold would say, if it were possible to find a similar loss (it isn't), but if he were the one to walk in with the beer or the whiskey, he'd pull us in with one arm, and he'd say, "Well, dammit, kiddo. Dammit." He would hand over an open beer, because if he handed it over already opened, you didn't have a choice but to drink it. "We better have a beer about it," he'd tell you. Darold Schneider was a pillar - a structure that was built deep into the foundation, of community, family, program, church, of all of us...