The Dearly Departed part 2

I'm going to continue with my regularly scheduled broadcast even though my sister just had her baby!!! I'll give you all the details that I have right now. I'm in New Jersey so I haven't yet seen the little tyke, so we'll all just have to wait for pictures and such. All I have for now is that his name is Malaki Tyler Pitkin and he was born July 12th at 3:26 pm. He weighed 6lbs 5oz and my mom says he's healthy as a little baby horsey. My sister had to have an emergency c-section, but she's recovering fine. I can't wait to see him!! I'm an AUNT!!

Anyways, that seems a bizarre first paragraph to open up this post about my late friend Joey Burch. However, I haven't given his memory justice and I haven't really ever talked about his death to anyone. However weird, I feel like now that I've resolved to just get it over with, I can't put it off any longer, especially because I have no more details than a paragraph's worth about my nephew.

So, to begin. Joey Burch was in my sister's grade. I knew his older brother because he was a year younger than me in school and they went to one of my elementary schools in Virginia. I watched Joey grow up alongside my sister. I remember him as this:



He was seriously the funniest kid I ever met. He was constantly making jokes, constantly messing around, but never really causing trouble. He was really a good kid. He was a freshman in highschool when I left for college and I didn't really ever see him after that, maybe once or twice, but from what I remember then, he was excited about the Lord as well. I went to his youth group every so often because it was close to my house, and I remember him worshiping the Lord.
My friend Phoebe called me one day last summer and told me that Joey had been in a car crash near where I used to live and that he had died. I was shocked. My first reaction was, why Joey? I didn't feel like Joey was expendible enough to be taken that early. Maybe it's because I knew him or that I valued his presence and I knew that other people felt the same. When Joey was in the room, you knew he was there. I thought, surely God would want to keep someone like that around. He was the pastor's son! Surely God had a plan for this kid. Before that, anyone I had known that had died had been old or, forgive me, more boring than Joey Burch.



It was the first time that I realized that I'm not any different than Joey. I really could die tomorrow even though men have made great plans for me. I sometimes think that there's no way I could die before I'm eighty because God has blessed me with a strange uniqueness and that there is no one else like me out there. Then I remember Joey. There is no one like him and the world has suffered a loss. He and his brother Ben were very close and I can't imagine losing my sister. Please pray for Joey's parents and Ben, especially as the one year anniversary of his brother's death, August 5th, approaches. I can't wait to see Joey again and I'm curious to see how his sense of humor has been divinely perfected.