Yesterday we traveled up to Idaho Falls and went to the funeral of the father of one of my best friends, Stacy. He passed away a week ago today. He was so young, and it was so sudden. I can’t begin to comprehend the profundity of emotion that she has felt this past week and what she will continue to feel, along with Nic, Jodee and Teresa, the rest of her family. I am so sorry Stace. As your friend I have felt so helpless knowing you are suffering in this way. I wish there was something I could do to alleviate it.

Death is such a strange thing to me, so bizarre and utterly baffling. There’s just no way that we are able to prepare ourselves for these kinds of turning points in life. It is mind-blowing how pivotal and eternally impactful the events of just a few moments can be. Brandi, another one of my best friends since childhood, lost her father 6 years ago this month also. We attended the funeral of Jason's cousins’ husband, just a few weeks ago. He was a 30 year old man who died of cancer, leaving his wife and two tiny boys behind, both under the age of three. I don't understand how anyone could live this life believing that there is nothing after. With how fragile and delicate our bodies are, and how suddenly we are taken, how can anyone really believe this is all that there is? What would be our purpose here?

It was a wonderful service. Such a sweet tribute to a wonderful man. One of the speakers touched on some things that really stood out to me. What he said rang true to me. He said, and I'm paraphrasing... that “it hurts so much to lose the ones we love most. But what would the alternative way to feel be? To feel nothing at all? We hurt so much because we love so much. To deeply feel sorrow is far greater at any time than feeling nothing at all. Where there is an absence of pain over loss, there is an absence of love. Mourning is the deepest expression of love.”

I also stole this quote from a blog of a friend of mine who lost her little two year old baby girl a few months ago. She entitled the post, "Sadness is underrated." It's an excerpt from an article that came out in the Chronicle Review by Eric G. Wilson. “I for one am afraid that American culture's overemphasis on happiness at the expense of sadness might be dangerous, a wanton forgetting of an essential part of a full life. I further am concerned that to desire only happiness in a world undoubtedly tragic is to become inauthentic, to settle for unrealistic abstractions that ignore concrete situations. I am finally fearful of our society's efforts to expunge melancholia. Without the agitations of the soul, would all of our magnificently yearning towers topple? Would our heart-torn symphonies cease?”

I believe these things. I believe that our ability to feel joy will increase with the depths of sadness we experience. I believe that suffering is crucial to enriching our lives and permitting us to develop character and depth. There must be divine purpose to it all, mustn't there? Yes, there must.

I know that life continues after death. I know the separation is only temporary, and that we will be reunited with our lost loved ones; "for they are not lost unto the Father, for He knoweth whither He hath taken them". The Savior has provided a way. I know that the atonement of Jesus Christ has provided the complete remedy for any and every kind of heartbreak that we are called upon to face. I know that all human pain and suffering has its limits. It can only last so long. It is only a matter of time; until all will be restored, until all wounds will be healed. Stacy, I'm sorry. I love you. In the midst of this all I pray you can feel Father in Heaven's love for you and find comfort there.