Thursday, 7:45 AM. –4 degrees, wind W, calm at ground level. The sky is blue except for the lake smoke, which scuds and billows across the eastern horizon, rising and falling, constantly changing shape and color as the sun struggles to rise through its cloying mass.We were all saddened, almost beyond words yesterday by the news that Mark Musolf, Common Council and Chamber member, among many other duties and honors, was killed in an auto accident on the way home from Madison Tuesday evening. His wife Jocelyn was seriously injured and remains hospitalized in Wausau. Mark and Jocelyn are owners of the Wachsmuth House Bed and Breakfast.
Mark was a valued member of the community, and an exceptionally nice person. Such tragedies give us pause, particularly at the holiday season. Another prominent member of the community said to me, “I assume there is a higher plan somewhere, but I sure don’t understand it in the short run.” Of course, none of us can. My only way now of understanding such tragedies is to reflect on my own father’s untimely death when I was sixteen years old. I could not understand nor accept that he was taken from us, and was angry at life for many years. It was only recently that it occurred to me that I have thought of him every day for the last fifty-six years, and that in fact he never left me. I am sure Mark will never leave us, either.
Our lives are like the ephemeral lake smoke…constantly driven by the winds of time and fortune we know not where, but filled, even if fleetingly, with beauty and light.
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