In Memoriam: Gary Bostrom

On Tuesday of this past week, my parents called to inform me of a death in the family–my uncle’s death, my mother’s baby brother. A compassionate listener. The one who, in a world intoxicated by petty factions and fixated on disintegration, pursued peace without forsaking conviction. The one who could forgive and really mean it. The one who found the straggler and walked alongside. The hopeful one. The cheerful one, ever young. The one who carried me on his shoulders when I was just a boy, took me on hikes up Pikes Peak, and introduced me to the majestic backwoods and streams of Colorado. I owe my love for the outdoors as much to him as to my dad.

I sat down on the back stairs and listened to my mom struggle to talk through her tears before saying goodbye so that she could call my siblings scattered over the world. I sat stunned. A sunny, summer day and the many plans it held suddenly halted. Memories fell over me in waves and I wept. Hannah sat down and put her arms around me and we cried together.

I feel like I’m saying “Goodbye” to those whom I love with greater frequency. I do not look forward to that part of growing older. William Faulkner once wrote, “Between grief and nothing, I will take grief.” I agree with him wholeheartedly, but grief is a derailing and unpredictable thing. It slows the spinning world down and offers some easily forgotten perspective, but it always slips in through the back door and rearranges the entire house of my heart. I keep stumbling over furniture that has moved, memories I had forgotten were tucked away in the attic are now sitting right in the middle of the living room. I find myself tearing up at unexpected times.

We are bereft, are we not? But we are not without comfort. We are not without hope. Blessed be God, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles so that we may comfort each other (2 Corinthians. 1:3-4). The One who says, “As one whom his mother comforts, so I will comfort you and you shall be comforted” (Isaiah 66:13). “Blessed are those who mourn,” Jesus said, “for they shall be comforted.” And then we read this stunning verse in Revelation 14:13, “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on. Yes,” says the Spirit, “that they may rest from their labors, and their works follow them.”

My uncle was a man of God. A peacemaker. A top tier engineer. A water man. He spent 36 years of his life supplying water to the nearly half a million living in Colorado Springs and the many more who live in that part of Colorado. He knew those mountains, each and every landmark, each and every stream. He was the one responsible for a decade long project that provided water from the Arkansas river through 90 inch diameter pipes and stored it in massive, underground tanks, for times of drought that often cripple the area—a project 825 million dollars in the making. His cutting edge engineering feats can be found throughout the state. He had his enemies, of course. You can’t be the head guy of anything without having someone hate you, especially when it comes to water supply. I remember visiting several years back and learning at the mini-family reunion dinner that someone had planted a bomb in his mailbox that past week. It blew the mailbox off the front of the house, but did little other damage. My uncle dropped the news like it was no big deal and laughed off the incompetence of the bomb maker. Uncle Gary was a man accustomed to conflict, but he never leveraged his power for domination; instead, he served. And he served with a happy heart. Literally. Every morning, he used to visit each of his employees in their office space and say, “How are you?” And “What can I do for you today?” Even those across political lines came to his retirement to acknowledge his incredible ability to build relationships across impossible gulfs. He performed remarkably difficult negotiations and I suspect even his former enemies will turn out for his memorial service. Much of the city will, that’s for sure.

Gary Bostrom.
My uncle.
My friend.
The peacemaker.
The water man whose last name means “camped by the waters.”

How fitting that they found his body in a stream. He was riding his bike on a trail when he suffered a heart attack that, as far as they could tell, killed him right away, pitching him off of the bike and down into the water. Almost as if God knew what he was doing in this story and decided to tie it up with a bow. A beautiful story. But the rest of us get to keep living without him now. My mother, without her baby brother to encourage her. My grandmother, without her youngest to cheer her. His wife and four kids get to figure out what it means to live without him, without his counsel, without a chance to say one last “I love you” and “Goodbye.”

Better to bow in the house of mourning, than to hand jive in the house of celebration—that’s scripture. Here, in the house of mourning, my mortality comes to mind. In the house of mourning, the limitations of time come to mind. In the house of mourning, I recall that all time is Kairos time. Pregnant. Meaningful. Infused with divine purpose.

Here, in the house of mourning, that great hymn comes to mind:
The day is past and gone,
The evening shades appear;
O may we all remember well
The night of death draws near.

We lay our garments by,
Upon our beds to rest;
So death shall soon disrobe us all
Of what we here possessed.

Uncle Gary was part of the swirling milky-way of God’s grace in my life, part of the gratuitous beauty and generosity of a God who keeps giving and giving and can’t help himself. Even death is a gift for those in the city of God. It announces a home going. The end of an exile.

We are bereft, are we not? But alive. Living the story because God woke us up again today. All this huffing and puffing, this play and work, planning and hoping, eating and laughing are but the interim between the beginning…and the end. The end that is but another beginning. And someday we will meet beyond the Jordan and Uncle Gary will take me into the backwoods of Heaven and show me his favorite streams slipping down the mountain and take me on his favorite trails, whether I like hiking or not. Until we meet on the other side, Uncle Gary, “I love you. Goodbye.”

“Redemption Song” by Kevin Young

Finally fall.
At last the mist,
Heat’s haze, we woke
These past weeks with

Has lifted.
We find
Ourselves chill, a briskness
We hug ourselves in.

Frost greying the ground.
Grief might be easy
If there wasn’t still
Such beauty—would be far

Simpler if the silver
Maple didn’t thrust
Its leaves into flame,
Trusting that spring

Will find it again.
All this might be easier if
There wasn’t a song
Still lifting us above it,

If wind didn’t trouble
My mind like water.
I half expect to see you
Fill the autumn air

Like breath—
At night I sleep
On clenched fists.
Days I’m like the child

Who on the playground
Falls, crying
Not so much from pain
As surprise. I’m tired of tide

Taking you away,
Then back again—
What’s worse, the forgetting
Or the thing

You can’t forget.
Neither yet—
Last summer’s
Choir of crickets

Grown quiet.