Death kindly stopped for me...
Another line from Emily Dickinson, who was obviously alive when she wrote it.
Two friends received this visitor, Death, into their families this weekend and for both, things came to a standstill in some ways, sped up in others. The normal stuff pretty much comes to a halt while new things take their place: meeting with the people at the funeral home, arranging for flowers, notifying friends and relatives.
After receiving the 5 a.m. phone call telling me that my second friend had just lost a loved one, I looked out the window in the living room. Huge, fluffy flakes of snow were showering down out of the darkness. I just stood there mesmerized by the sight of it for a few minutes, thinking how beautiful it was, remembering this past week when similar flakes pretty much brought things to a grinding halt and rearranged our routines completely.
We think we can't stop for anything... then something neat like snow comes (hot chocolate, sleds, no school) or something eerie like death comes a callin' ... and we find that in reality, we actually can step aside from the daily-ness of life and sit a spell.
Right now I'm thinking that someday, although it may not be popular to believe it, a trump really will sound and the dead in Christ as well as the living will rise to meet the Lord in the air. And whenever that happens, once again, we'll find that the things we thought couldn't wait.. really could.
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