Immortality

In the daily weave of our lives, those who have died are still strong, guiding threads. Theirs is the golden glimmer or perhaps the brilliant red or the melancholy blue—still they are part of the whole cloth of our lives. They are the ancestors: the “goers before.”
Through this, we know immortality.

A grandmother and granddaughter talk while holding a photo album.

In the hour-to-hour rush of our daily tasks, they travel with us through something they taught us which is now ours to do; through something they loved which is now ours to carry out; through something we shared which is now ours alone and yet not.
Through this, we know immortality.

In the minute-to-minute grasp of where we are, we remember the joys our departed gave us which opened us up to hope, the sorrows we knew together which taught us strength, the life shared which is now ours to steward.
Through this, we know immortality.

In the second-to-second pulse of life, we sense the spirit of those we have loved and lost. This presence is too shy for naming, too amorphous for full knowing and yet as real as the days we shared.
Through this, we know immortality.

They are more than remembered, they are memory itself. For what we love lives on in the way our beloved dead accompany us through our life—their words and wisdom our guide, their humor our relief, their restless concern for the world our charge.
Through this, we know immortality.