{"id":258,"date":"2010-03-04T15:18:54","date_gmt":"2010-03-04T15:18:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/?p=258"},"modified":"2010-03-04T15:18:54","modified_gmt":"2010-03-04T15:18:54","slug":"one-year-ago-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/?p=258","title":{"rendered":"One Year Ago Today…"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2026I was a part of an experience that left a mark.<\/p>\n

It was an experience with death. But it was much more than that. It was also and experience with love. And with family. It was pain and comfort at the same time. Laughter and tears. Immense, unbearable, and crushing sorrow (for a wife, a daughter, a son, among others), but also powerful, relieving, load-lighting gratitude (for the husband and dad, who was suffering constant pain). <\/p>\n

It was the day that my friend Rick Owens took his last breath.<\/p>\n

It ended a long journey against life-stealing disease, but it was life-giving disease, too. While his body was dying, his spirit leapt to life with the clarity and love for God and others that only comes to those who have an awareness of how brief life is.\"Rick<\/a> <\/p>\n

Most of us don\u2019t. But Rick did. And being with him in those last months and weeks and days left a mark. A mark that I hope I don\u2019t soon forget. <\/p>\n

I spoke about much of this at his funeral. You can listen to it here.<\/p>\n

  <\/object>(Non-flash audio link<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Rick\u2026I love and miss you. I hugged your wife and son last night, and will pray for them and your beautiful daughter all day today. Thank you for how you handled death. Thank you for how you handled life while it was yours. But thank you especially for how you handled death. <\/p>\n

And thank you for knowing and loving Christ. We all look forward to life without end together.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2026I was a part of an experience that left a mark. It was an experience with death. But it was much more than that. It was also and experience with love. And with family. It was pain and comfort at the same time. Laughter and tears. Immense, unbearable, and crushing sorrow (for a wife, a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-life","category-the-best-life"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pO6nf-4a","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}