I heard this song and I thought of my father. He died very close to age 60. I was 14. It was sudden, too. One morning he had a stroke. Before the next morning, he was already a corpse.

I never quite understood why he had to be taken away from me so early in my life. But I guess some things don’t have to be understood, but are just the will of God. It took me a long time to comprehend it.

I’m now 36 and thinking of my own mortality. I know that I don’t want to be missing in my daughters’ lives. (Both are under age 3.) But if I’m taken away from them earlier than they could handle it, I don’t want for them to be angry with God, as I was for a long time. I want for them to think that I will be with God for all eternity, and that I will await their arrival there.

I hope Fred’s family is thinking of the day they will get to see him again, and look forward to it. But for now, it is just horrible for them to see him go. My deepest sympathy to the Hunt family.

(They might, just might, be remotely related to my husband… His family is from New England as well – CT, with ancestors in NH, Maine and New Brunswick.)

Years ago I attended a memorial for the young son of friends. He had died by drowning in a lake just after his high school graduation. You can imagine the grief.

One question from the Priest’s eulogy has remained with me: “How long is a life?”