Do you really know that death is always near?

Same here, glad to share the space between.":O}

I'm stunned.
Man proposes God disposes. Nothing we do or can do changes this.
All of creation is in gods hand or it could not be.

what a gut punch! i am just so filled with sorrow.Was this completely unexpected?
I guess not as they tested you for it.
I have come to believe that we should not pray to get what we want or even what we need. We should rather pray that we should be enabled to know and do what our spirits call us to do.

But nobody ever said there wouldn't be endless tears.Or that those we love would ever be "safe" or beyond the reach of harm..

The reason I am so drawn to this quote is that there is no getting around it's truth.

"Tis as fearful thing to love that which death can touch."

Every thing is on the auction block. Every blade of grass every new born of every species.We live by eating each other...how could there not be tears?

We all know the outcome, but we put this knowledge as far from ourselves as we can.

My son die?
My mother pass? My beloved wife in grave danger.

We create a facade and paint upon it a picture of eternal life.
We are desperate to believe our daughter will be pasted over by what hunts all daughters.

Because such losses are beyond our ability to accept even as we endure them.

Over and over though out our lives the question arises:
"Why can't we be like storybook children
walking hand in hand across the meadows."?

Why must everyone eat of this bitter fruit?
Why won't life give us shelter when we are most in need?

This has come to give me comfort, cold comfort it is true, but well here it is.

It was written by Herman Melville in the "Great American novel"
Moby Dick. It goes like this:

"where lies the finale harbor
Once we unmoor no more?

In what rapt either sails a world
of which the weariest shall never weary?

Where is the foundlings father hidden?

Our souls are like those orphans whose unwed mothers
die in bearing them.

And the secret of our paternity lies in the grave
and we must there to learn it."

We know only that we will go the way our fathers and mothers have gone before us. We will know their doubts and fears. But God willing we will have the faith of our fathers as well.

I know not where they went only that we will follow. And we will find our destined place among the cold starts and the warm hearts of those we have loved.

Yet still a belief persist within me that one day in God's own time
We will walk hand in hand across the meadows...

Life is preparation for our journey. Death a garden gate.
Heaven found in the hearts of those who wait for us beside the gate.

Luta, they wait for you beside the Gate.

here we are old men crowed around the grave awaiting our invitations.
we were always destine to stand here in wonder of our lives.

All that was given to us before we could even ask.
The million and one choices of great and little consequence.

The days we slept in. The years of toil.

The hearts that reached out to us.

all the cris rcoss paths we took which looked back upon appear as a straight line to this very moment.

We stand here in summation. A gathering of the spirit even as are bodies begin a long or short decline.

We are not finished, completion lies behind the last door.

I will see you again or for the first time beside the gate, it swings both ways
giving entrance to life and death.

Be at peace we near the entrance to the peaceful realm.

a bit of dialog from a forgotten movie"
Ist man: "I'm to young to die!
2nd man: "Nonsense! your just the right age!!

Death could have written those lines.":O}