Remembering Kollin Long

The death of livestock exhibitor Kollin Long has been very sobering for this office. I had been planning on sneaking up on Bill in one of his deadline fashions, but I don’t have much play in me this week.  I understand the suffering that the Longs are enduring, and my heart goes out to them.

I didn’t know Kollin well.  I knew he had exhibited American and crossbred steers.  I think that he might have also exhibited a few heifers, but I may be thinking of one of his brothers.  I also knew that he had completed his first year of college at South
Plains and would have been starting his first year at Texas Tech.

I also knew that the Longs, like most livestock families, are a close group.  He and his brothers Kendall and Karter, all exhibited livestock. The brothers, and their dad and mother, Buddy and Theresa, worked as a family unit like the majority of livestock exhibitors.  They were and are good people.  They are the kind of people that you want as your friends.

I am quite sure that Sunday, August 19, was suppose to be one of those normal days where young people go off to fish and return home with fish stories along with stories about one another. 

That is one of the horrible things about death….everything is normal one moment, and in the next minute, an entire family’s life is turned upside down.  You want to recapture that one moment in time.  You want it to be like a video tape that you can replay, edit, and change what is happening. But that cannot happen.

Kollin Long had a good life: tragically short, but the years he had were good ones.  He has gone on to a place that is more beautiful than any of us have the creativity to imagine. The people who need our prayers and our support are his family and his friends.

I have learned, first hand, the power of prayer.  Anyone who has lost a child will tell you that they do not know how they will live through it.  I think that the only way that any of us survive is through the power of the prayers our friends say on our behalf.

You may not be able to comfort Buddy, Theresa, Kendall and Karter first hand. You may not know what words to say to them. But all of us can pray.  In prayer we can ask that God comfort them in this horrible time.  Even if it is difficult for them to believe right now, they will feel the power of those prayers.  Do what you can do, and pray for the Long family.

-Cherie