Walking Each Other Home

I have attended more funerals than weddings.

One day, the coffin will not belong to someone else. It will be mine.

Death is the one appointment none of us can cancel. No rescheduling. No exemptions. No exceptions for the young, the loved, the needed.

Some welcome it after a long season of suffering, it comes as mercy. Some are not ready. There is still laughter to share. Still places to go. Still people to love.

Some hope to be remembered. Some quietly accept that they will return to dust.

Then the questions come.

Will there be another life? Will consciousness continue beyond the last breath? Will we find the ones we lost? Will someone be waiting?

What really waits on the other side?

I don't know. None of us do.

We are all walking each other home, asking the same questions into the dark.
As long as there is breath, there is still time to add more light.

We cannot control how we die.
But we can choose how we live.

That choice is still ours, today.