"I don't know what to say," she confessed. The room was silent, expectant. "Do I tell you the good things about him? Convince you, or myself, that the bad things didn't happen?" She sighed. "It's stupid, all of it. Maybe I'm just angry, maybe one day I can see this differently, but all I see right now is a waste. A life that was thrown away. How's that for a eulogy?" She looked at the faces that filled the chapel. "I owe you something, I know. You're here. You're here because you are my mother's friends, or you've worked with my dad for fifteen years. Or you played ball with my brother when he was eight, or you grew up three doors down from us." She stopped. "Thank you."

She faced the long wooden box, and swallowed the anguish that threatened her. "I hate this." She wasn't sure if those words were in her head or her mouth. She honestly didn't care. What difference did it make how she grieved? What difference had any of it made? Nothing had stopped the carnage of his drug abuse, nothing had stopped what they all knew was coming.

"Some of you may be asking, why did God let this happen? Some of you may be wondering if you could have stopped him, could have said something that would have made a difference. Some of you may feel guilty because you didn't try to stop him, or maybe you even partied with him." She shrugged. "I don't know what to tell you. All I know is that life is a gift- one to embrace or one to waste. You are responsible for what you do with it. This," she held up her hands,"is what happens when you think that gift has no value."

"I don't know why he thought that, that his own life wasn't worth saving. It wasn't a lack of love, because love surrounded him. We loved him in his diapers. We loved him with his chili bowl haircut. We loved him in his tball uniform, and we loved him in his thundercats costume. In prom jackets and football gear, and hunting caps and in a thousand other moments, we loved him.

We loved him fiercely, until loving him hurt us fiercely."

She paused, wondering what more could be said, and floundered for a moment. "I obviously don't have the answers here. I don't have the explanations that we want, and I can't offer the resolution that we need. Maybe those are things only God can provide, and in His own time. But I do know this. We choose our paths. We're here, because somewhere along the way, my brother chose a path that ends in death. We grieve his choices, we lament his passing- but we, here in this room, continue to live.

If we take nothing else away from this day, let it be that. May we always strive to choose the paths that lead to Life."

*********
Don't let this be your life's lesson, Trey. Choose to see the value in your life, not because of anything good you've done, but because God chose to breathe you into existence. Embrace that gift.