Loss.

We've felt all too much of it lately.

Recently we all shared in Jen-Jen's loss as her dad lost his long, brave battle with illness. In our Elgonquin community we've lost good friends---Xebra, AlanBear, and most recently and suddenly Safari. And before we said farewell to Safari, did anyone suffer more immediate personal losses than she did? Yet we all drew hope and strength from the way she embraced life and sought out new friends and new experiences despite all that had happened to her. Guess that was one of the things that made her passing so painful to everyone who had the pleasure of knowing her online and in person...although it also makes her memory a treasure.

When you come right down to it, we've had to deal with loss a lot more in recent months, not just within our own community but as a society. Something I was a part of this fall, just around the time we got the latest round of bad news in our own ranks, reinforced both the hurt and the best legacy we got from our now-absent friends. We have a museum in my home town, the George Eastman House and International Museum of Photography, that's said to be the world's best and most comprehensive of its kind. In remembrance of the September 11th tragedy, instead of just doing an exhibit of images from the events in New York and Washington that day, they decided instead to ask people around the community and around the world to submit photos of people, places and good times they treasured. "Picturing What Matters," they named it. They called for images of the things and the people worth celebrating and protecting in our own lives, that made ourr lives worth treasuring and gave us hope for the future. They didn't know what kind of response they'd get...so they asked me to get involved in putting the word out over the air, and recruited the CBS television affiliate for a promotional tie-in. Well, it turned out they got tens of thousands of submissions, mostly people's photos of friends, family members and good times. All of them were put on display, filling wall after wall. Some were memories of a distant past, but most were new...and some as fresh as the first pictures of babies born this summer. When it comes to hope for the future, there's nothing that expresses it more than a newborn baby.

We did a remote broadcast from the exhibit on the anniversary of September 11th, and invited leaders of just about every part of the community and every faith. We agreed on one thing during the course of the on-air conversation. Whatever we might disagree about, we shared both a common sense of pain and loss, and an even stronger sense of hope about our lives and the people and communities we care about. And that hope, everyone agreed, would get us through. It always has, however tough the times we've known as a nation. And we could hope it always would, in our own lives. Had that hope put to the test a couple weeks ago, when a good friend who had contributed a lot to my radio program over the years as a regular guest, passed away. But his girlfriend and his family knew just what to do...turn the memorial not into a time for mourning, but a time to celebrate all the good times and good memories he'd given us.

That's something that will help us move on as a community too. Whatever happens, good friends, good experiences and all that's enjoyable about life makes it all worth moving forward and looking ahead.