Somehow, St. Michael-Albertville Still Finds Ways to Smile

If you're a St. Michael or Albertville resident, and you've recently turned your eyes toward the heavens and muttered the phrase, "O.K. What next?" I can honestly say I don't blame you.

And, I'm right there with you.

For our community, it seems, it has been one thing after another. A senseless murder last fall. Grandparents lost at sea. And the death of a hometown hero.

It's starting to add up.

Yet, despite the strain on our brow, and the slight slouch in a our shoulders, you can still see that glint in our collective eye, and the wry smile of someone who knows brighter days are still ahead.

No son should lose his father to violence at the age of 12. No group of 15, 16 or 17-year-old kids should have to witness their best friend struggle through a devil of an illness, and then drift off into an eternal sleep. No son should have to tell his grandchild his grandpa and grandma are lost in that boat you saw on TV.

Yet, here we are. And sometimes, yes, you do have to do those things.

What I've seen, though, through all of this, is a community that helps those people pick themselves up after being knocked down, dust them off, and help them carry on.

And that's why this is home.

Because of people like Tobey and Jenny Berning, who give up a chunk of their summer to help families battling cancer, which took their friend too soon. And Blair Kelley, who keeps finding unique ways to remember his fallen friend.

There are heroes like the restaurant owners, who have donated food proceeds and cover charges from events that dot the calendar year. Or the school parent community that has rallied for both Aaron Heil and the family of Timothy Larson, cooking dinners and raising money and providing transportation or shelter for kids. And there are the local club members, from Rotary or Lions or the American Legion, who have also offered to lend a hand.

At Luke's funeral, held Thursday morning, his aunt Lisa read the story of a soul that was willing to suffer here on earth, just to bring people together. In order for us, as people here on earth, to show the love that we're all capable of, sometimes someone has to take the fall.

In our case, that was Luke, or Mr. Larson, or Gerald and Barbara Heil.

Perhaps the best way we can honor them is to keep that amazing sense of community we've found through things like Team Luke, or the "Fire Up Run," that, for a moment or two, united us all.

They say "it takes a village." After all we've been through lately, I'm still so glad this one is mine.