Healing begins

Thank you all for caring so much and also for your comments on my tribute to sweet Anthony. The Strauss family needs all the love and support in the world right now, and will continue to as time marches slowly onward. There will always be now two missing places at their dinner table and the reality of that is just heartbreaking. The slow march towards healing though did begin I think yesterday at the funeral, which was an honest, genuine, and thoughtful celebration of Anthony's life. And it was also a very very painful and tearful goodbye. The outpouring of emotion was drenching and much needed. When Anthony's father Doug delivered his touching eulogy, he spoke very passionately and faithfully about his son, a boy in perpetual motion who only had one simple direction in life, full speed ahead, and who created joy, and chaos, wherever he went. Doug singled out each of Anthony's siblings in turn and talked about their individual relationships with their dearly departed brother. The common thread between them all was love, the unshakeable love that bound, and will continue to bind these kids together forever. Knowing how much love fills the Strauss house from within and seeing how much continues to flow in from the outside is a reason for hope and a recipe for eventual healing.

I hope that the immense hurt that so many people are feeling right now, whether they know the Strausses or not, will transform into a renewed compassion for others that when shared, in whatever form, will help make the world a better place. Whether it renews your faith, renews your passion for life, or renews your urge to go squeeze your kids and hang on to them so long that they start looking at you funny, that renewal is a gift that we can receive respectfully and reverently from little Anthony Strauss.

Like his sister Gloria before him, Anthony will have a permanent place in my heart. I will honor them the best way that I know how and that is to keep their memory close and kick life up a few notches. Life is a gift, plain and simple. As I have mentioned before, the great philosopher, Ferris Bueller, once said, "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it." So crank it up, and 'Amp' it up. Do it for Anthony, for Gloria, for loved ones past and present, and for yourself. Any ordinary day can become an extraordinary day if you just decide to make it that way.

We are all on this amazing, precious journey together and along with being united through the great joys of our lives we also can be united in sorrow, and that is the only way to get through it, together.