At the beginning of this week, I blacked out the profile photos of the Shepherd Journal and Shepherd Maple Syrup Festival Facebook pages out of remembrance of Joel Frederick. I told myself that I would reset the profile photos after the service on Wednesday, but now it’s the day after and I felt like it isn’t enough to simply change the profile images back.
Reflecting on what it had meant to be friend’s with Joel, and what lessons could be learned from his passing, I have come to realize that Joel was the type of person who was always ready and willing to support you along the way, no matter what it was that you were working on. It is also a sharp wake up call about how I’ve chosen to live my life but at the same time Joel had been a model on how one could live: be available to others, always take the time to be helpful, try to learn new things.
There is a poem, “The Dash” by Linda Ellis which talks about the dash in between a person’s birth date and date of death as a representation of how they lived their life.
http://www.linda-ellis.com/the-dash-the-dash-poem-by-linda-ellis-.html
Joel’s service yesterday reminded me of that poem. He did everything he could to treat people well. Here is a section from the poem which stands out for me:
If we could just slow down enough
to consider what’s true and real
and always try to understand
the way other people feel.
In honor of Joel, I wanted to let everyone in Shepherd know that If you ever need to chat with someone, feel free to private message the Shepherd Journal page and someone will respond. Maybe you have a problem you can’t solve, or maybe you just want to share a story. The admins and I might not always know what to say, or have the right answers, but we will listen, and we will do what we can to help. And, if you’d like to help others, consider volunteering as a page admin, or just post something relevant to the community on the page. The Shepherd Journal belongs to everyone in the community.