Death Becomes Us...

Today is one of those reflective days. It is the funeral of a friend and a colleague and I got to there a little early and sitting at the cemetery, the quietness, the solitude and the gloom that hung in the air as the different groups and clusters of people come in to bury their loved ones, it hit me again as it always does at times like this and practically everyday that life is one lonely journey but a lot of people ‘own’ you at death.
The living do not occupy my mind today though but the dead and they surround me with their tombstones perfectly erected and some already falling apart as in life… some are firmly focused on their journey and some fall apart along the way. So here I am sitting down wondering: How did they live… all these names and dates and lovely inscriptions and epitaphs? What did they live for?
My friend struggled a little bit on this journey but that is a struggle only friends know. She had a big smile always and that is what people remember. As I write this piece, I paused to think if and the times that I’d seen her cry. Oh yes she cried…
She had an abusive husband…she cried. She wanted children…she cried. She struggled with her health…she cried. But as much as I remember the times she cried, I also remember the she laughed so much. The times she triumphed and the times she lived.
Death is an end, a window for faith based dead but an end of a particular journey albeit.
Margaret had a dream I’d learn in death but a dream she had. She had a vision and she was headed somewhere… that surely is much like us still living. Did she get there? Did she park on the way? I do not know and we can never tell. Life is about purpose and longevity is promised to no one. No, no one at all but to all of us a dream, a talent has been given.
In the end, death becomes us and that is all of us… Do not put off until tomorrow… today is all you have. Live like it is the end because it is the end in essence…