Quietude of the Week

The unfathomable has happened. We have lost a soldier to war… a local soldier, at that.

According to the Salt Lake Tribune, Scott Lundell, “A one-time football star and student president of Granger High School in West Valley City was killed Saturday in Afghanistan when insurgents armed with rifles and rocket-propelled grenades attacked his unit... Neighbors in West Valley City, where Lundell lived with his wife and four children, said the 35-year-old soldier was tall and handsome, but a rare sight in the neighborhood over the past few years, as Army training and his deployment kept him away from home.”

I honor this soldier and his young family he leaves behind. And I could just leave my respects and appreciation at that. However, the tragedies of war has, unfortunately, landed in my very own yard.

See, this young man who willingly joined the military and was fighting for the people in a land faraway from his home, he is a part of my history, my family’s history. He was the brother of my sister’s best friend. He was the first boy my sister noticed and fell in love with in the most innocent ways of a fourteen year old girl. He was the one who she believed would bring her a birthday cake and sit upon a glass table top with her as she blew out the Sixteen Candles – just as Jake Ryan did in the classic John Hughes film. And he would be the one who would go on to eventually marry the little sister of one of my friends.

Yes, his death has brought the sadness of war right to my family’s porches.

And… truly… the sadness sinks in deep.

Deeper than I could ever imagine.