mediendo la vida

monday in austin was grey, rainy, and dreary.

and maybe things were just feeling dreary because we had received news that the wife of one of our professors in mexican american studies had finally lost her battle with cancer.
my roommate and a couple of other good friends decided to make the trip to corpus christi for the rosary monday night and the funeral service on tuesday morning.

though it was an incredibly emotional and sad couple of days, i'm glad that we were able to be there for our professor. his wife was obviously an amazing woman; people who knew her from corpus turned out in droves for the services and sang her the sweetest of praises. so her death seemed like an especially poignant loss. for everyone.

back in austin last night, a few of us were gathered with our professor for drinks, a soft end to an intensely emotional couple of days.

one of the graduate students there remarked that, as difficult and as tragic as the situation seemed, the positive aspect was that we could see the strength of our community in that moment. it was heartwarming, actually, to see all the people who had driven from austin to corpus--many leaving town at five in the morning to make the ten o'clock mass. graduate students, administrative staff, and professors all came together to cushion his loss with whatever love and affection we could offer.

i couldn't help but recall that just a few weeks earlier many of the same people were gathered for the wedding of another professor. it was an intimate and sweet ceremony in san antonio, replete with the rituals of happily ever after.

and that's just how life goes, right? with joy and sorrow in almost equal measure. but the positive aspect through it all is the strength of our community that assures us that we won't experience any of it alone. and there's comfort in that.

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