Sometimes

I'm invoking my right to direct this blog a little bit left of humorous today. Please, bear with me on this one. This was such a bittersweet weekend for me. First, the mostly sweet: I got to spend time with my Dad up at our cabin on Hebgen Lake, near West Yellowstone, Montana. (Pictures Pending). While the weather was mostly bad and the fishing stunk (I lost a bubble, broke my rod, and caught ZERO fish for the first time in a long time up there), I had a great time. While there, I realized that I'm a very easy man to please. This is all I need to be happy: a few days and nights in the mountains, away from the rush and bang of the city, watching the cloud cover creep over the lake, smelling clean, crisp air, and realizing that my biggest worry of the day is how to beat Dad at Scrabble that night. That's all I ask, and thankfully, I can get it one or two weekends a year. On those days we didn't want to fight either nature or Idahoan fishermen for a sweet hole on the river (mostly because of all the snow and the POOR fishing lately), we spent our time reading, fixing things, playing Scrabble, and listening to General Conference (bless BYU-Idaho Radio!). I can't imagine a better way to spend my time. Seriously, I needed this weekend. The pounding drudgery of life at law school can get to be too much some days. This was a breath of fresh, Montana mountain air that made school seem...well, less bad. On to the Mostly Bitter. A friend of mine--ward member, neighbor, and impressively good man, Tim Filichia--was killed over the weekend in a head-on car collision in Arizona. He was returning home from Arizona after spending time with his family during the Conference Weekend. I didn't know Tim very well. We only talked a few times at ward choir or at some activity, but I have to say that the man had such a charisma about him that you couldn't help but know and like him. He was funny and caring and an examplar of living kindness, and far too young to leave life now. He will be missed and most definitely remembered. Sometimes. Life ebbs and flows too much for you to hide away from its juddering, defining tides. Sometimes, they ripple and swirl around you in an uneasy, unearthly dance; sometimes they lick your leg as light and quaint as down; sometimes they promise to engulf you as a menacing, white-capped crush. But it is exactly at those times that you must cut the water--step into the shallows, plunge into and manipulate the depths, slide over and through the waves; do something, ANYTHING, but live life while it is at your toes. But don't, Don't let the water simply sluice through your fingers and drip away. Embrace the currents and rip them. We'll miss you, Tim.