It’s Wednesday night and I’m sittin’ at church in a classroom full of four and five year olds. The lesson deals with growing inside and out and one of the youngsters states that he’s not gonna get old ‘cause when you get old then you die.  He’s just gonna stay little.  When the teacher, who is also his aunt, reminded him he’d just had a birthday, he was unfazed.  The solution was quite simple.  He just wouldn’t have any more.  That’s a pretty big sacrifice since it also means no more birthday presents.  I’m bettin’ he hadn’t thought that all the way through.

Wouldn’t it be nice if it worked that way? Wouldn’t it be nice if we were guaranteed our three score and ten years and then anything after that was just a bonus?  I know a lot of parents who would sleep much easier at night, knowing they would probably never bury their children.  But even with all the wishing in the world, it just doesn’t work like that.  The mommy in me refrained from telling him what the funeral director in me knows all too well.  Everyone is old enough to die.  I didn’t think his parents would appreciate me sharing that knowledge with a five year old and then sending him home.

Being no respecter of persons, Death takes his victims at will with no regard to age or gender, race or religion, or any of the other biggies upon which we mere mortals are not allowed to discriminate. It doesn’t matter if you’re the most important person in your community or if you have an abundance of people who depend solely upon you for their survival.  I could continue with all the things in life that make no difference to Death, but you probably get the picture, and honestly, my intent isn’t to beat you over the head with your own mortality.

My goal at this moment is to remind you to wisely use the time you have been given, knowing it is not limitless. We should prepare for tomorrow, but we can never plan on it.  In the funeral business we know not to put off until some random point in the future what we have the opportunity to do right now.  Our schedules can change in the blink of an eye.  So can life.

So now that I have you pondering the depressing idea that Death’s shadow is constantly hanging over all of us, please allow me to point out that such knowledge is a good thing as long as it doesn’t prove paralyzing. Realizing we have an unknown expiration date can either instill in us a fear of the future or gratitude for the present.  If we choose fear then we lose both the present and the future, meaning we don’t even get to have a meaningful past.  But if we choose gratitude that expiration date no longer has any power over us.  By truly living, we exact our greatest revenge on Death.  So, to quote the knight who stood before Indiana Jones in his quest for the Holy Grail, “You must choose.  But choose wisely.”

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