By the Rev. Jon Rieley-Goddard

Dear friends,

    The first time I saw Nick Linde, I made a mental note to avoid him if possible.

    The last time I saw Nick Linde, I felt gratitude and respect.

    The better man is gone. Dead of cancer at my age, 53.

    Today I feel scared and angry. It's just not right. We're told that when the Rapture comes, one will be taken and one will remain. That time comes again and again, and the quick are left to remember the dead.

    My first impression of Nick was that he was conservative and evangelical, two things that I have an ambivalent and complicated relation to. I also noticed that he was self-assured and in charge. In time I grew to understand that when Nick was present, Nick was in charge.

    As the years passed, at some point, at some public event, Nick said hello to me; I was surprised, then pleased. He had done what I had refused to do; he had extended the right hand of friendship to one too self-absorbed to take that chance.

    After about five years and six churches (interim ministries) in the Presbytery of Western New York, I became a nearer colleague of Nick's when I accept a call to Pierce Avenue Presbyterian Church in Niagara Falls.

    The eight Presbyterian pastors in this end of Niagara County meet once a month for breakfast. I attend often; Nick was always there, always in charge. I would periodically receive phone calls from Nick, telling me about events near to his heart, and more often than not, farther from mine. Someone wiser and more eloquent that I am said, in the days after Nick's death in September from cancer, that "we didn't always see eye to eye, but we always saw heart to heart." That just about sums it up for me, too.

    When pastors get together, at best, the conversation is stimulating and the time is well-spent. When pastors get together, at worst, they play games such as Ain't It Awful or Who's the Greatest (I Am). The Niagara pastors, whom I affectionately call the Sopranos, because of our reputation in the Presbytery of being a power group, rise above the level of game behaviors, and in the course of four years, I heard a lot of stories about Nick's ministry. And about his health concerns.

    Nick came back to breakfast in August. He was bald as a baby and had lost many, many pounds, but his fire was still strong and his compassion and You First attitude, coupled with his natural leadership, were all there. The stories this time were about his illness and his care.

    Then came the news that Nick was not expected to last the weekend. A week later, well past the weekend in question, Nick died. At his funeral, if you were a mere 15 minutes early, you were part of the overflow crowd watching the service on closed-circuit TV. I and a whole bunch of Presbyterian pastors were in that group. After a moment of adjustment, the experience of being at, not just near, Nick's funeral kicked in for me.

    The high point of the service for me was when Nick's elderly uncle, Uncle Charley, got up to sing a song. He talked about his nephew Nicky, always calling him Nicky, and he talked for quite a while. At first, I was shaking my head in impatience at this silly old man taking all this time, but slowly I began to smile and by the time he turned to the accompanist, with a big smile on his face, and said, Let's do it, honey! I was laughing out loud and loving him, and loving his love for his nephew Nicky.

    In the days since the funeral, I've been slowly getting back to normal. The day I heard the news of Nick's death, I was in my basement shop, working on a boat project. I could hardly focus on the tasks, at first, though I found that the structure of a project freed my mind to wander and remember. After the funeral itself, I've been grappling with a lot of thoughts and feelings about death and life. Through it all, I have returned again and again to the absolute tragedy of our loss, and the absolute poverty of those who remain. Some would say that God took Nick because God needed him in heaven or some such idea. Not me. The God that I worship doesn't take people away; people live out their lives and their choices, and their DNA, and time and chance, and love and hate, and disasters and cancer. The God whom I worship gives me tears to shed and stories to tell -- thus do I praise God. The God that I worship yearns for our time and attention, and mourns with us for our losses, knowing that people without freedom would not be people but something else of a lesser quality and lesser interest.

    I don't know why such a good man had to die so quickly and so young. I don't know why I have been blessed with health and joy far exceeding my own pain and sorrows. Sometimes I feel like I don't know anything worth knowing, frankly, but the more the nature of existence intrudes on me the harder I cling to my interests, passions, beliefs, and pursuits. Nick's death has sharpened my appreciation of not only him and who he was to so many; his death has also sharpened my appreciation of the life that remains to me and has given me fresh reminders to hug my wife and thank God for my blessings.

    I'm grateful that I knew Nick, and I'm grateful that God has given me more time to aspire to Nick's level of goodness.

    I just feel grateful, and my prayer is that my gratitude will issue in love, and action, for my God, and for myself and those whom I love, and for God's people.

    Give someone you love a hug for Nick. You'll be glad that you did.