Our community has come up short

this past week. We aren't the same today as we were a week ago, and we

won't be the same next week as we are today. Such is the way of this world.

When we lost Dave Hamrick,

we lost something of ourselves. Dave Hamrick literally fell to the ground

in the middle of a sentence, "with his uniform on," as one of

his eulogizers put it, slap in the middle of a soccer game. Our "solid-as-a-rock"

Dave gave way.

Many knew Dave in his newsman's

shoes. Others knew Dave in his after-hours shoes. My heart goes out to

Terri, his wife, and to Gabe and Nancy, his children, to his parents,

the rest of his family, and to all the rest of us who are going to miss

his presence in our lives.

I've been playing the soundtrack

from "Forrest Gump" since Thursday, not because I think Dave

is some kind of Forrest Gump character, but because I think that the music

on the CD is the kind of music that Dave could groove to, the kind of

music that calls to mind a guy like Dave Hamrick and puts me in touch

with a version of myself that is a "me" I'd like to be.

Dave was a musician, a sportsman,

a journalist, a writer, and the consummate family man true blue and a

stand-up guy. Whether playing the trombone (or some makeshift facsimile),

burning up the field in soccer or softball, exploring caves, or up to

his elbows in perennials, you name it, Dave had that "peaceful, easy

feeling."

He had that sense that, "today

is today, and it's the only today that I'm going to get." He was

just one of those rare people a gentle giant who wore life's essence like

it was his own skin. He had it right, and now the rest of us who are still

trying to get it right are left to do so without his sage example.

Dave was a gardener. He was

one of those aesthetic gardeners stone paths, winding trails, colorful

perennials and lush foliage were the stuff that dreams were made of.

I can just imagine that for

his wife Terri, Dave's left-behind handiwork will be a bountiful and lasting

legacy. She can walk out into the backyard and every little bloom that

raises its head will be a gift from Dave.

If she's still, she might hear

the sandy echo of Dave's yard shoes on the stone steps. She might smell

the cool earth as it smelt when he turned it over and made the world a

little more beautiful one day. She might stand there and feel as though

she is a silent witness to Dave's refashioning of himself in his celestial

adornments.

For you can bet he's busy just

now carving out a little corner of heaven for himself, working up a soccer

roster, cluttering up his desk, and planning how he wants his place to

look so when the rest of us cross over to that other place, we'll know

just where to find him.

That's Dave's real legacy.

Dave was, and is, a Believer.

When people die so suddenly,

so young, we often find ourselves asking God (or the universe), "Why

do you take the good ones and leave the bad ones?"

Maybe it's because God (or

the universe) wants some of the rest of us to step up to the plate and

leave a little more of ourselves to this planet. That's about the only

sense I can make of it all. Because otherwise, how could we live with

it?

I think what bothers us the

most in times like these is that we're called up short. We feel compelled

to do something more than what we've been doing. We feel an obligation

to make the most of each day, give as much as we have to give, so that

somehow we can work to fill the hole in the universe left by our missing

loved one only that's not the most daunting part.

The scariest part is the fear

that we won't, that even with such an in-your-face lesson of how precious

life is, how short, and how really out of our hands in many ways our lives

are, that somehow we'll just keep on doing the same things tomorrow that

we're doing today.

So what do we make of all this?

What do we make of Dave's premature passing?

What legacy was left to us

when Dave died in the middle of his game?

I think that if Dave had a

chance to finish that last sentence, he might make the second half it

something like, "Make it a good life."

[Amy Riley is pursuing her

master's degree in English at West Georgia University in Carrollton. She

writes occasional columns for The Citizen. You can e-mail her at AmyRileyOpEd

@aol.com.]