But a Mist...

Tuesday I sat in stunned silence as the scene unfolded before me.  On my right, my Aunt laboriously gasped for her last few breaths of life.  Over the past seven or eight months the cancer had advanced quickly.  First her lungs, then her brain.  We knew her remaining days would be brief.  On my left, in the bed adjacent to hers lay my nephew, Garret, in his bassinet.  He, a red newborn, just short of a fortnight old.  

Both had eyes closed.  Both were silent.  

On my right was death, on my left was life.

My emotions swung as a pendulum between these two extremes.  Garret, so young.  So vibrant.  So full of promise.  Helen, so tired.  So sick.  So feeble.  One in the early blossom of spring, the other in the husk of fall.

The conversation in the room gravitated between the two.  

My relatives congratulated my sister on the birth.  They spoke of Garret's small size.  How cute.  Could they hold him?  Could they make him smile?  They spoke of what he would be and how he would grow.  They looked toward his future.  A young man, not yet treading out his path of destiny.

My family also spoke of my Aunt.  My Grandmother clutched a framed photo that had recently arrived in the mail.  My Aunt, dressed to the nines for a work party held in late 1999.  How good she had looked.  How much she enjoyed her job.   How people had loved her.  A testimony to the story that she had written on the pages of her life.

For one we looked forward, for the other we gazed back.

As I watched and pondered it quickly became clear how fleeting life can be.  We are but a mist that tarries for the morning and is gone by the noon.  A reminder of our own mortality.  We live, we love, we serve, we pass.  All the rest is window dressing.

This is not to say that life is meaningless.  Rather, life, and what we do with life, is of the utmost importance.  This is perhaps best stated in one of my favorite quotes by Sadhu Sundar Singh,

"It is easy to die for Christ.  It is hard to live for Him.  Dying takes only an hour or two, but to live for Christ means to die daily.  Only during the few years of this life are we given the privilege of serving each other and Christ.  We shall have heaven forever, but only a short time for service here, and therefore, we must not waste the opportunity."

With birth springs hope, with death come reflection.  What happens between these two doors is left to our decisions and wills.  To serve or to be served.  To love or to be loved.  To lay down our lives, or carry on with our own agendas.

This Saturday we will remember my Aunt.  She passed shortly after eight on Wednesday morning.  My nephew will be at the funeral, something he will never remember.

I will also be there.  And I will shed two tears.  One for my Aunt.  One for my nephew.  One for the sorrow of loss.  One for the joy of gain.  One for a life well lived.  One for a life yet to be lived.  One for she who is present in memories, but absent in body.  One for he who is present in body, but cannot yet remember.