My friend was killed last week. These are words that still riddle me with shock and disbelief, so I will say again: my friend was killed last week. He was riding his motorbike when a truck smashed mercilessly into him, and he died instantly.

This good, fine, strong man in the prime of his life was suddenly, grotesquely taken from his wife and mother, and all of those who knew and loved him. The mourning is tangible, and thick with sorrow and agony.

And beyond those who knew him so closely, are those who were helped and made complete by him. They are numerous, perhaps beyond counting. Because my friend Rob Fead was a priest.

Originally a Roman Catholic clergyman, he later became an Anglican, and was admired beyond words in his church of St. Jude’s in Oakville and his diocese of Niagara. I had the pleasure and privilege of working with him for all of 2017, and he made me a kinder, wiser person. He was my teacher and my colleague, my helper and my supporter.

Part of my grief is that while I certainly thanked him, I’m not sure I ever made him aware of the monumental debt of gratitude that I owed this invincibly humble man of God.

That, of course, is so often the way. We leave things terribly late, and are too clumsy and lazy to tell our loved ones — especially our parents — how much they mean to us. Rob would probably have been embarrassed by it all, and told me that it was nothing. It wasn’t, however. In some ways it was everything.

In these days of understandable cynicism about organized religion, and suspicion toward the clergy in particular, the work and achievements of Rob Fead should be roared. He was, if you like, the real thing. He didn’t so much live by the Gospel, but lived in the Gospel — whispering its compassion, truth, and reassurance.

He was an army chaplain too, and in 2014 presided over the funeral of Corp. Nathan Cirillo, the reservist who was killed while standing guard at the National War Memorial in Ottawa. “My job, in the midst of all that chaos and fear, was to bring some sense of hope,” he said.

Hope was precisely what he did bring to all those who knew him. We sometimes visited hospitals together, spending time with people close to the end of their lives, often in lonely discomfort and sometimes in physical pain. As the darkness hovered, Rob managed to show them the light. He held them close, and this robust and tough fellow became the personification of gentleness. The first time I saw it I wept.

Rob was a priest, I am a Christian, and it’s at times like this that we naturally ask for explanations and answers. There are shelves of books written about why bad things happen to good people, and the injustice of it all, and I am not going to address that open wound in a newspaper column.

I will say that the Christian view is that the world certainly isn’t fair, and that it’s grace rather than karma that informs our faith. No, we don’t always get what we deserve during our lives, and that goes for the sinner, as well as for the saint.

This is merely the land of shadows, and real life has yet to begin. I am convinced that a genuine relationship with God is based on a dialogue, even sometimes a heated argument, and I’ve no doubt that Rob is at the heart of that perfect discussion right now.

Yet no amount of certainty about God, and love for Christ, will expunge the grief and the sense of emptiness. He was taken far too early, and that biting reality cannot be escaped. What can be said is that he left the world a different place from what it had been before him, that he made it just a little better, splashed it with joy and empathy, and reminded us that we’re here to care rather than to judge, and to help rather than to hurt. That is quite the legacy. Goodnight my friend, goodnight. Until we meet again.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...