I was thinking about death and how I’ve been isolated from it. There have only been five times in my life that I have been personally involved, and not really directly. The first was when I was 8 or 9 and the funeral of my grandmother. What I remember was people standing around her grave as she was being buried.  I was at least 100 feet away and wasn’t allowed to go nearer.

The second was when I was when I was in grade 7 and I heard that my friend had accidentally shot himself while hunting gophers. I never went to his funeral as I heard about it after the fact.

The next was when I was 38 years old and I flew home to spend Christmas with my family, as my dad was going into the hospital in a couple of months for a heart operation. After my visit, he drove me to the airport and as we said our good-byes I knew and he knew that we would never see each other again. He died shortly after his surgery and I never went to his funeral.

Years later I went to a neighbors’ husbands wake. IT was a small somber gathering with people I didn’t know except for the wife of the deceased. There was no body present.

Years later, after I got divorced, my girlfriends aunte died and I went to her wake. This time there was an open casket and I saw my first dead human being. The thing that struck me at the time was that she seemed like an empty vessel as the life had been sucked out of her. I compared her body to a dried corn plant like the ones you often see as a Halloween decoration.  Other than that, I have had friends, auntes, and uncles die, but I have never gone to their funerals for any number of reasons.

So this thing called death is rather an unknown to me, but I also realize that disease and aging are on the path that leads to it. I just thought of the message I got on Says 255 – Seek the Doorway to Eternal Life . I feel  that INCLUDES physical life and our Body but where it is healthy and youthful. It’s kind of like the memory you have inside yourself when your physical Body is getting older and you don’t  look like it did, or are able to do the things you used to do.

I’m planning on heading back out West to see my family this summer as I feel that my mother, who is going to be 93 in July will be passing soon, as will one