18 November 2008

Okay, I see I'm not being as faithful to this little journaling process as I had hoped. A week ago today I buried a friend. He was only fifty-three years old. George was one of those people that was uniformly liked....seriously. He was one of those people that everyone clamored to be around. He had an infectious smile and his wife a warm, whole-hearted laugh. Her life has changed forever. It's interesting to me to watch how people react to their own mortality. I have had the disadvantage of burying many young friends. The "death process" as they like to call it in hospice strips us of so much....independence, ambition, the illusion of control, and yet, it gives so much. I have watched fear turn to peace, anger turn to acceptance, sadness to hope. Only with God's grace can this happen. To face the unknown foe calmly...this is truly a gift from God.

I heard a man on Discovery channel declare, "In this life we get to be what we want to be..." What a deception! We are all accountable to forces we can never understand. And, yet, in our pride and arrogance, we feel so empowered, so entitled. But I digress...the simple truth is we can't all "be what we want to be." There are limitations on every soul and the ultimate limitation is death. Whether your beliefs tell you it is the end, or simply another beginning, the truth of the matter is we will all face it one day. My prayer is I face it like George, embracing it fearlessly with both arms.