My brother-in-law Charlie Walker ended his earthly journey today, August 13, 2026. He was married to my husband’s sister, Martha, and they would have celebrated their 58th wedding anniversary this coming November. They had been together a lifetime.
Charlie and Martha were already married and had children when Wayne and I started our lives together, so I have known Charlie for a lifetime, too.
Charlie was a man of many talents and abilities, who loved people and music. And in these past months of fighting cancer, he had a renewed love for the Lord Jesus and openly shared that love with other.
Charlie always had a great love for music. That love gave him and I a common ground and he was a tremendous help to me when I first began playing the organ in church. It wasn’t a natural talent for me the way music was for him and I was nervous and felt totally inadequate for the task. I shared that with Charlie and he just smiled and told me to try it... and to keep practicing. I don’t think he knew how much he helped and encouraged me.
Charlie was always there when anyone needed help, to give of his ability and time. It was as though everyone was a part of his family, and family takes care of family. That was his personality and his heart. He had a very big heart!
My own heart breaks for Martha, their kids and their families, and for my husband. Our lives were forever changed that moment the Lord called him home. There will always be a hole in our hearts that Charlie filled without us even being aware of it.
Grief is hard, it is painfully hard. It takes your breath away. You want to stop the world and just breath if only for a moment and you grasp for something to hold on to. Sometimes that needed breath comes in the form of a hug from a family member, a meal from a friend, a text message that simply says I’m thinking about you and praying for you. A breath that reminds us we are not alone in our grief.
The broken heart and sorrow we feel is a tribute to the relationship we had with the one that has died. The emptiness we feel in their passing from here makes Heaven more real. Sometimes the hardest thing about the death of a loved one or a friend is to realize that the sun comes up tomorrow, and life goes on. So we cry through the night until we feel there are no more tears, and in the morning we get up and go on. We never stop loving them; we never stop missing them; we always remember them; and the time will come when we can touch their memory and it will be precious and comforting.
Just not today.
