Take a moment
Two young people from this area died over the weekend. Two-year-old Walker Cress wandered into a creek Saturday near his rural Cedar Point home and drowned. I don't know the Cress family, but their grief must be insurmountable and my heart goes out to them. A two-year-old is such a wonder. It can be a demanding age, trying one's patience daily, but there isn't another like it. It is a time of budding personality, independence, awareness, and insatiable curiosity. Watching a child at this age is like rediscovering life. To lose him would almost be more than one could bear.
On Sunday Bo Gaines, a student at Bethany College in Lindsborg, died after falling down the stairs at a friend's home. Bo grew up in Peabody, a sunny, freckle-faced little boy with a wonderful disposition. When his parents moved to Cassoday he attended El Dorado schools, but kept his local ties. In high school he stopped by often on his way to and from baseball games in the area. Later he would buzz through town going back and forth to college at Lindsborg, sometimes stopping to visit, sometimes just honking and waving as he drove by.
Bo worked for us for several years in our auction business and he loved a bargain. He hauled marvelous treasures home to his mom and dad
He scored on fishing equipment by the carload. Once when I was taking him home I tried to make a joke about how many minnow buckets and tackle boxes one family could possibly use. He quite seriously informed me that "you can never have enough." He had a penchant for ugly lamps. His parents never said a word. They let him bring in his treasures when I thought for sure I was scheduled for a "private conversation" about curtailing his bidding. When Bo graduated from high school we bought him the ugliest, most garish and obnoxious lamp we could find
We will miss Bo. We thought we had many more years to enjoy his friendship. We are grateful to have had him in our lives.
Our communities have been hit hard in recent months by the tragic deaths of children. There are no words to express the awful emptiness their families must feel. Sometimes at night after the death of a child, I want to tuck my own girls in and be sure they are safe even though they have been gone from home for years. I often wonder if my mother feels the same. I expect she does.
Take this moment. Put down the paper and tell your children you love them. Do it now. Talk to them, hold them, and listen to them. Take a deep breath, count to 10 (or 20) if you must, but take the moment. Do it every day. They need you and they need to know that you need them. It doesn't matter if they are two or 22 or 42, this is the day that you have. This is the day that your children have. Tell them, be there for them; take the moment.
Tomorrow may be too late. And nothing can be worse than that.
— SUSAN MARSHALL
