Living and Dying

I find myself thinking powerfully tonight about mortality. Or at least, to say it more clearly, I find thoughts about life and death present powerfully to mind. I am thinking of loved ones, among family and friends, who have reached their 80’s, who find some things harder to do now in everyday life, whose abilities are changing. They are still filled with life, with emotion, with desire, with hopes and dreams along with many memories and regrets. Most of their days on this earth are behind them. I’ve lived a good number of those days with them. It is difficult to think of life without their company, their presence, their voices, the reassurance of their hands.

I know how to think of those difficult days to come because of other deeply loved ones who have already in times past left this world. I know how they are still missed. I know how irreplaceable they have proven to be. I know how their loss is true loss, though I believe as well that they live in God, that we are still joined, and will be again.

I think of my own mortality as well. I marvel at how infrequently I’ve considered that incontrovertible fact over the years. I don’t know what to do with the thought. It is simply there. Just real. This is the Easter season and I think of resurrection. I believe it. I revel in it. But it does not directly touch these musings on mortality and loss. Somehow the two stand apart, related but distinct.

One thing born again here is deep gratitude for life, and for sharing it with others, and for being related to other persons in all the ways – by blood and love and shared adventure and memory – that one can be. Life is so good. And love is so good.