Today was one of the worst days of my life. It didn’t start
out that way. It started out with John waking up sick, which is bad enough, but
pretty normal at my house. So, I had to tell my Dad that he couldn’t visit
because we try with all our might not to spread germs to him since it can make
him very sick. I suggested that I bring Charlotte to visit him, since she is
having a birthday and they were both excited about her gifts: him giving and
her receiving. He thought it was a great idea, so a little while later, we
headed out. Just as I turned onto my Dad’s street, I got a call from my
husband, who was obviously sobbing, saying that Pastor Don Sweeney had just
passed away that morning. My whole body started shaking and it took all I had
to finish the drive safely.
Don Sweeney was one of my family’s closest friends. He was
so close, in fact, that he was really more like family, as we also consider the
rest of his immediate relatives. He was our pastor for many years when we
attended Community Bible Church. He baptized our oldest son, counseled us for
numerous hours, and was a wonderful example of a man whose heart longed to
share Christ. He had the caring, deeply loving heart of a pastor, and the
gospel of the God he loved so much was what he wanted to share with whomever he
met or wherever he preached.
Don’s life had a lot of sorrow and difficulty. From a
challenging childhood to job difficulties to a new house that burned down and
had to be completely rebuilt to health issues, and so on, and still Don loved God and loved others. Finally, the
health problems became too much, and that brings us to this shocking and
unbelievably sad day.
We will all miss him so much. We will miss his laugh, his wisdom,
his concern for others, his love of movies, which we sometimes watched
together, his love of the Pistons whose games we sometimes enjoyed together,
and on the list goes. We will miss seeing him walk by with Buster, his beagle.
We will miss our dinners and walks with him and his wife, Sherry. Enough can’t
be said about Sherry – about what a strong person she is, a tower of steel in
fact, but that’s a whole other story. Today is about Don. Yesterday, he was
here, at his little grandson’s birthday party. Everything seemed okay, family
said. But, today, all that has changed. Our dear friend, husband to Sherry,
father to Becca, Rachel, and Morgan, grandfather, is gone. We will miss him so
much. I keep reminding myself that he is now in heaven and at peace. He is
pain-free and with God. We are without him now, but, Lord willing, we will see
each other again some day. Rest in peace, Pastor Don. And this is for you, just
as you said from the pulpit way back when:
“No man
is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part
of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well
as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own
were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And
therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.”
John Donne
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