A melancholy post this morning:

• [Abigail->] left this morning for a week at a church camp up near Waco. Though she’ll be with one of her close friends there, this is the first time she has spent any significant time away from home, and she has been simultaneously hugely excited and quite nervous at the prospect. I’m both proud of her bravery and sad that she’s one step closer to growing up. With her there and [Emily->] in New York, it will doubtless seem strange to be a two-child family for the week.
• I got news this morning that our neighbor, John Morrisett, died last night. John was an ex-marine in his seventies, and was one of my favorite people in our neighborhood. He had been bedridden for a few months, and increasingly frail for a year or two beforehand. Beth, his wife, said that it came as a relief, since his quality of life had been so poor toward the end. Until the last year or so, John had kept very busy, always involved in some volunteer work or another with a more active schedule than I think I could manage at half his age. He always had a kind or wise word whenever we saw him, and I’m sorry to see him go.
• I won’t go into any detail on this one, but a friend of mine has had his life pretty much collapse around him over the past couple of weeks. While some of it is a pretty direct result of some terrible choices he made, it’s still heartrending to see, and I pray that good may ultimately come of a miserable situation.