The nature of death

The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living - Marcus Tullius Cicero
No one wants to die.
Even people who want to go to heaven, don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share.
No one has ever escaped it.
When death comes as a precious release from pain and sickness, it is a little easier to accept.
But when it happens unexpectedly, it shatters the fragile nature of all our lives.
We are faced with our own mortality.
Once the deaths around me were mostly of those older than me, but now I am older, I notice so many younger than me have died; and their loved ones weep and for some the nation has wept.
My angels remind me that it is the things we do for ourselves that dies with us, because the things we have done for others, lives on in the lives of those others.
People who have died this week will live on in our lives because of what they have done for us and we thank them for their gifts of challenge and humanness, their courage and strength.
I often hear and say words at funerals that speak of the life that has gone.
Things like, the Dash - of a life between birth and death; the Rose on the other side of the wall, and the Hands of Time. More and more as I work with my angels I realise that the space between life and death is at best shadowy and vague.
And as Edgar Allan Poe said, "Who shall say where one ends, and where the other begins?"
So it is our responsibility, yours and mine, to live a life filled with joy, contentment, pleasure and growth; a life lived for others and filled with spiritual growth which accompanies the rich emotional experiences we are having. Arohanui.
Shirley-Joy