Recently, a friend of Zeke's died. Very unexpectedly. Joe was on a snowmobiling trip with a couple of buddies. On Friday, he called his wife and told her that he was feeling like he was coming down with a cold. On Saturday, he stayed back from snowmobiling to rest. When his friends got back, they couldn't wake him up and he wasn't breathing normally. They rushed him to the hospital, where they put him on a ventilator. His wife flew out that day, along with his parents, and the doctors told them that Joe wasn't going to wake up. They took him off the ventilator yesterday morning and said goodbye.
Joe and his wife got married a month after Zeke and I. They just bought a house. Joe was the same age as Zeke, and his wife was even younger than I am (actually, she's only 21.) She's widowed, after only six months of marriage, at the age of 21.
Even though I didn't know Joe or his wife very well, his death shook me up. It was just so sudden, without any warning, and he was so young. It made me think about how incredibly fortunate Zeke and I are, to be healthy, happy, and together. I told him so.
Now, Zeke isn't really one to express his feelings verbally, and often he gets uncomfortable when I'm "mushy." He didn't really respond, and was kind of goofy for the rest of the evening, actually.
Another person could have seen him as callous or unemotional, but just because he doesn't express himself well with words in times like this doesn't mean that he wasn't feeling the same things I was. He just shows it differently. He may not have said anything, but he did hold me all night. He knows just as well as I do that we're blessed, that we cherish our time together, and that we shouldn't take the time we have together for granted.
He just didn't say it. He told me another way- his way.
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