How Oft Must Death Knock at Thy Door?

We come to this life with innocence and purity. A ray of hope for the future. Unstained by darkness, sin, deceit, and evil. Life leads us down a winding path of experiences, some good, some bad. We learn that within us we harbor emotions that must be experienced in order to be learned. We have so much to learn and so little time in which to learn it.

We learn of love. Oh how sweet life is when love knocks at thy door. Brightness is all about you and laughter fills the air. Every thought is positive and hope comes and lingers beyond its time. Beyond its time because it is soon to be followed by reality. Reality, the spoiler of the party, the clouds of a dark day, the reason for despair, the awakening from a dream so sweet.

Death comes. The unmistakable sound of death’s knock at our door. Our loss is plenty and almost too much to bear. We feel the joy within draining from our being and leaving us with an emptiness too painful to describe. We forever remain scarred by this newly learned emotion created by death. Yet it and it alone is the one certain visitor that will time and again come knocking at our door. When family ceases to exist and friends cease to be, we will forever be in the company of death. That is, until that last day of our own life when death knocks at our door one last time.

When we are young, our life is like a garden. We plant friendships, nourish them, tend to them, and hope they grow and become fruitful. Family bonds might grow stronger, or drifting apart might occur. Youth brings many and varied knocks at our door. Life is good.

Graceful maturity, known by some as old age, requires acceptance of much emotional pain. Memories become the sustenance of our life. Had we known their true value we might have reached out for more memories when we were young. But now it seems to be too late for that because the primary memory-maker in our life at this time is death. Family and friends all about us fall ill and death comes and takes them away. Too often it is that we hear the knock of death at our door.

One of life’s last lessons is proof of our own mortality. Oh yes, we will have learned time and again of the mortality of others. But our own mortality remains a mystery to us until the very end. So it is that life teaches by example. So it is that the emotion created by death is passed from one to the other as if a torch to be carried forward into the future of the world.

How oft must death knock at our door? Will death knock at your door today? Death knocked at my door two days ago and with much sadness and emptiness I will bury my friend this week. Another memory that will outlive the person. Another learned emotion. Life goes on.