Earlier this week, as my siblings and I reminded each other, marks another year, another year since the passing of our father over thirty-five years ago.  Despite the span of those decades, we still miss him, and our mother as well.  Time may heal some, yes, but time will never fully overcome the scars its events imprint on our lives.  There are losses that, try as we might, we cannot completely assuage.  Although we learn to live with them, though we may even come to develop a measure of acceptance about them, we will never totally erase them from our hearts.  For always and forevermore, they are embedded in the innermost patterns of our soul.

    As my siblings and I prepared to leave our mother to return to our lives after saying our final good-byes to Dad, one of our uncles remarked, "Everyone is going back to their lives."  True enough.  But we'd never look at our lives in the same way again.  Nor should we.  We're personal beings who respond to our lives in personal ways.  Our lives continue, yes, but take on more furrows with every passing year.
    And the universe remains, an inscrutable mystery, heading to its final denouement, its ultimate destiny.  As are we.  And what then?  Almost inevitably, death makes us wonder: what lies on the other side?
     As the Beatles's "In My Life," a song I play often, so poignantly observes, "There are places I remember, some have gone, and some remain . . . "
     Thanks, God, for my father, who he was, and who he was to me, and thanks, God, for the fact of eternal destiny.
     And thank you, Dad.  Thank you for everything.