[Posted By Jake]

Tonight we bury a neighborhood son.
Eddie was a kid we all loved. He had a smile that could brighten your day and manners that never failed to impress. He was the oldest of a gang of six. Sometimes it seemed like he was the surrogate parent to his brothers and sister, and by extension, half the kids in the neighborhood. Funny thing was, he was fine with it. Big brother was a responsibility he accepted with pride and carried out with grace.

His family is one that we admire. In a busy world, they are committed to each other and to doing things right. Home improvements on Saturday, church on Sunday, doing their part with volunteer activities all week long. Whether it is family dinners, Communion or graduation celebrations, or just making time for friends on a warm summer evening, they are the good people and parents we all would like to be. 

Tonight we bury a neighborhood son.
This sadness has affected us all week. We try, with mixed success, to replace the hurt with good thoughts. I reminisced with Eddie's Rose Tree Colts football coach. He remembered a kid who never missed a practice; a family that never failed to thank him for his service. Sports and games were a constant, only interrupted by fishing season. Eddie was very good at the former and an expert at the latter. Sometimes it seemed like he'd spend more time setting up everybody else's lines than actually fishing himself. As parents, we'd normally worry about our young son around roads and streams and whatever strangers were hanging around Chester Creek. But not when Eddie was there. We knew our son was in good hands.

And now we're left with the prayer that Eddie is in good hands. The viewing is going to be long and difficult. The funeral mass will overflow the church tomorrow. I expect the procession to St. Peter and Paul to tie up the roads pretty well in the county during midday. It's funny, when you are an older person, the number of cars in your procession speak to the fullness of your life. For a young man of 24, it is simply a measure of the pain we never planned to suffer.

Tonight we bury a neighborhood son.
Drugs are an insidious blight on our community. To take a kid like Eddie from us, from his loving family, from his bright future and all the good he was destined to achieve, is a tragedy beyond understanding. Our hearts ache for the family's loss and for our own. Much to our son's chagrin, we've fussed over him a little bit more this week. Probably all the kids in the neighborhood got a little extra attention these last few days. It's hard to accept that being a parent can hang in such fragile balance. Eddie, we miss you and love you, and hope that you have found the peace and joy with God that you so wonderfully shared with us.

(Editor's note: Some people have wondered whether the author of this post is my son, Jake Spencer. It is not. It is the post de plume of Dean Helm, a Middletown resident, who has posting privileges here. He did a nice job on this one.)