The Passage

We all enter this passage. Until then, we peer at it, contemplate it, fear it.

Every one of us will observe people walking this way before we ever step foot on that path.  But when we do, it's a final walk.

I watched my father on this passage 44 years ago.  A painful walk.  Now I watch my mother.  Her journey is soon to end.

Death is so common. You would think that such a common experience among humanity would historically have elicited something different than grief. Since we ALL go through it and have done so during our entire history, would it not be more natural and sensible and evolutionary, to be more matter-of-fact about it? We are born, we live, we die. Repeat for every human. As far as losing someone, hey, there are plenty of human companions to take the place of one who walked that final passage.

Why is it then that we feel this gaping hole in our chest when we lose someone we love?  I can remember thinking for decades after my dads' death that perhaps he was just 'lost' and would walk through the door any moment.  What a bizarre hope.  Really I don't care what someone thinks. I am 60 and still miss him.  Now, it's my mother.  While my head understands the reality of death and in her case, the progression of cancer, my heart is being ripped open.

The reason death is ALWAYS so hard is because it was never designed into us.  I believe in a Divine Creator who made us for eternal life.  We were not made for death - and that is why death is so 'unnatural' to us. We grieve not just because of the loss of presence, we grieve because deep in our visceral soul, we face the most unnatural event of the human experience - its end.

You and I will walk this passage as my mother walks it now. It ends in death. No one escapes. But I say to you that there is another passage you can access on this side of life that will usher you back to the original plan of God.  The still living and very real Jesus Christ offers us a way of living that returns us to the original plan of God.

Talk to me if you want to know more.

For now, I'm helping my mom on the final part of her passage here.  And when she is done, she has a new passage to walk.  But it still hurts like hell.