I Feel Selfish for Wanting Him to Stay Here Longer

The grief that accompanies death is difficult to subdue. I don't think anyone who's lost someone they truly love feels happy after they die. Even those with the greatest faith feel a sense of loss when a family member or great friend passes on to their heavenly reward.

In my case, I not only felt sad but I often felt selfish in the days surrounding my brother's death. I knew he'd accepted death and was not afraid of it. He didn't view death as an end and he "welcomed" it, as he often said.

Despite his embracing view of death, I was still hoping for a miracle for Michael. When I thought about why, the main reason was that I wanted to have him around longer because he was just such a great guy. He was a person I could go to for advice on things both spiritual and temporal because he was a great gauge of what was right and what was wrong. He had lived among so many for so long, and he had seen so much goodness combined with so much badness that he simply knew much more than the average person. I think now that maybe I was being selfish. I wanted Mike to be around to help me make decisions. Maybe he felt he had made enough. He was tired of making decisions and was ready to move on.

I am sad - selfish as this may be - for the fact that my unborn children will not know him. Assuming God grants me the gift of offspring, I'll be the only sibling with children who were not baptized by my brother; that one especially hurts me because I think it's such a privilege to have been baptized by a man like Fr. Michael Sepp.