They Shall Not Grow Old

We don't live very long before losing a family member, a friend, even a pet, we will never forget. How we feel when this happens when we are young versus as we grow older, differs only in the intensity of what we remember about them.

Looking back, I now know that my struggle to make sense of their passings was far more difficult for me then than it is today.

Why is that?

I now understand, I didn't lose them, they were never mine to lose. The timeline of their mortal lives were simply different than mine. That isn't what I wanted, but as a common summary of a biblical proverb says . . .

"Men plan, God decides."

 Laurence Binyon's poem, "For the Fallen", includes the following stanza.

"They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old: Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them."

I take comfort in that enough to now believe that is, in part, what compelled me to write Raymond's story.