A Quicker Exit

 

I’m thinking a lot lately about lives cut short:

Children, teenagers, young men,..

You.

You were only 38 when your eyes closed in death.

Somehow, because so many people live 80 or more years, I expect that everyone I love will live that long. That I will live that long.

But life is a vapor.

Your Bible app was open to the Epistle of James when I first opened your phone after you were gone. James says that phrase: Life is a vapor.

I have so many questions.

Did you know you would have a short life? Had a dream prepared you for your early death?

Did you truly have a good life?

Were you ready?

I know you believed in Jesus. You preached and lived the Gospel. In that sense, I know you were ready.

 But-when we went to bed that last night, your demeanor was softer, more mellow.

You were human and sometimes, although you were a loving and good husband, sometimes, your words were quick or your mannerisms brisk. (And same with me, admittedly).

Not that last evening.

Everything was calm about you.

You let me choose the tv show.

You wanted to be close to me.

How I wish I could remember our last real conversations together, as husband and wife, and you and James as father and son. Vainly, I have tried to conjure up those moments but mostly they seem to be gone forever, lost to me along with the warmth of your arms around me and the deep timbre of your voice saying “You’re so beautiful”..

I remember some conversations with you, vague snippets where you would say things that made me laughingly say, you are not old. But you saw yourself as older. Maybe because deep within your mind or some other facet of your being, there was some part of you that knew that the flesh and bones that lived and breathed and moved and loved and danced and ached and cried was destined for a quicker exit than many into the Light of Heaven.

All of this is conjecture.

All of this is uncertainty.

But this I know:

You lived.

You loved.

You were and are loved.

Gone but not forgotten is a cliché but it is what I hold onto.

If I live till I am 90, I will always wonder why you did not.