How is the fifth anniversary different from the first, second, third or fourth?
We have learned to live with our loss, but we will always miss our child, and the sadness that he is no longer with us will accompany us for life.
The fifth anniversary is no different from those before or all those in our future.
Please read the lyrics below from a song we sang at Andy’s funeral.
1. How should we grasp what cannot be grasped?
It is hard to let go and yet there is no end in sight.
We have had so many questions, and we still need time.
What to do with our lamentations and our sadness?
2. Life has flown, death arrived with power.
Laughter? It has moved far away, suffocated by deepest darkness.
There is emptiness in us, silence. There is nothing more we can do.
Why this bowing down? Why this dying?
3. Much faster than we suspected the blue sky is torn.
Our plans have been thwarted. The world seems cold and gray.
What will be? Who can say? Oh, God, these questions torment.
Do you help to bear the suffering? Do you offer consolation now that we can count on?
4. Do not let us not sink, God, although the pain is overwhelming.
Where we stumble and struggle, hold us up and do not let us fall.
Let us trust that you protect life.
Help us to build on you, on the blessings you enact.
L.U.
Source:
Lyrics: Eugen Eckert, 1998 Strube publishing house, Munich, EG plus, No. 163