For Those Who Grieve

Last night, a friend of the family died after a battle with cancer. The gentleman left behind a wife and children, and many friends. To those grieving, I send my best wishes.

I was climbing into bed at the end of the day when I learned the news with a mixture of sadness and relief. And as I slipped into the temporary slumber of the living, I mused about the strange sort of miracle, an odd word to use, about the moment life ends and death begins. What an amazing thing that can happen that forces to cease the light and energy that keeps us engaged on this plane. While science can pinpoint a last heartbeat, a last brainwave in the dying, no one can tell exactly the millisecond when one's soul drifts from his body, never to return to it.

Recently, I read a beautiful article about a woman with mental retardation--she lived in a state of innocence, a curious blessing that resulted from her condition. As she lay dying, her father's life having ended before her own would, she opened her eyes in her last moments and asked her mother if she could go now because Daddy was coming to get her. There is sweetness in that, a message of relief to the living-- that souls venture forth even before the last breath, that there is hope and promise.