Editor’s Note: Readers, I am forgoing my regular column today to give one of my writers the chance to reflect on the recent death of UNM student Wolfgang Scott-Cohen. Thank your for your understanding. My column will resume next week.
The thoughts on death that take hold of the mind after a friend’s passing:
A longing to see them just once more; the guilt in thinking that you might have, somehow, saved them; the remembrance of times you have spent together … These seem cliché; a repetition of the countless thoughts of others who have lost before you and of those who will follow in the footsteps of your grief.
But they are not clichés. No, they are the proper burial shrouds of a stubborn optimist; an ambitious thinker; a loving son and brother and a dear friend whose company the world will miss. They are the burial shrouds that each heart who knew him lays on the passing of our dear friend Wolf Scott-Cohen.
Those who shared his company are forever indebted to the time they spent with him, and those who had not yet met him will unknowingly have missed the privilege of meeting one of the greatest men I have met in the time I have spent on this Earth.
Know that as you think of Wolf today, and whenever you think of him, that you are not alone in your remembrance. May he cross over the river, and rest under the shade of the trees, cradled in the hands of God who blessed this Earth with his presence.
