Mazinaw Musings May 30, 2001
LAND O'LAKES NewsWeb
HomeGoodbye, and a Wonder?
by Bill Rowsome I didnt feel the earth shake nor see the sun eclipse, but he had died. He had died days before and the emotional waves that engulfed the family didnt reach me at all. I heard about it much later. Years of friendship, joint adventures and pleasant association - all terminated by a will beyond our control.The experience set me musing. How important are we humans? We hold a spot on the face of the earth. We influence those around us. We accomplish, we laugh, we cry, we die. What else can be expected? Is it only dust unto dust, ashes unto ashes, the final words before the burial? The words, May God rest his soul, usually are added during the final goodbye, but that is a plea or prayer of a nebulous uncertainty.
The law and personal wishes dispose of the physical remains. They may be buried to slowly rot in the earth, burdened by a heavy piece of granite that will hopefully remind a generation or two that he existed. They may be incinerated and scattered, allowing the imprisoned atoms to reunite quickly with mother earth, their original source. In all events, the physical part of living is over.
What is left? This has been the musing of philosophers and religious leaders since thinking began. Where do we come from? Where do we go? What little child has not asked those searching questions of parents? What parents have not silently asked it to themselves? Until someone near and dear passes away, most of us dont give it a serious thought. Have we become less attuned to death as we progressed further from living close to the land? Have the TV news images of wholesale human slaughter in wars, ethnic cleansing, and the piles of bodies being removed from earthquake- ravaged areas and flooded land immunized us to death? We unemotionally watch murder and destruction on TV and movies screens, and in some unexplainable instances imitate the images. Stories of deliberate killing and torture are written to amuse us. There seems to be a decreasing respect for human life. Do we warrant the privilege of concern for our hereafter? Is there a hereafter? and what is it? Have the philosophers persuaded us of eternal life, something beyond the usual physical end?
He, as I knew him, is gone. His physical body will be recycled - no known memory for him but there will be memories of him. Will he exist only in the minds and hearts of those that loved and knew him? His genes, combined with those of his wife, will guide the looks and actions of succeeding generations, until the gene pool so dilutes his influence that it will become infinitesimal. The ripples of inherited characteristics will, like his death, fade as they stretch away from the source.
Man's stay on earth compared to the age of creation is but a paragraph in a very lengthy book, but we have done more to change our world in our relatively short existence than has any other event. Jointly we are destroying our physical home yet individually we must be something special. We have the envious ability to struggle and think for three score and ten years as described in the Holy Scriptures - then, sometimes before and sometimes after, we are through. Our individual physical existence is over.
We look heavenward. We wonder, and are beginning to wander among the ancient and far distant stars and planets, speculating if we are replicated elsewhere. Each of us is unique on earth - are we in creation? Do we only exist for a physical lifetime? I wonder, now in death, if he now knows the answers to these vexing questions. I wonder if he knows the world is a better place just because he was here?
