Just fade away

      Lately there has been several people that I know rather personally that have developed some serious illnesses. It's been a year of unexpected medical problems and a year of people looking  their own mortality squarely in the eyes.  Reflecting on this fact caused my mind to wander even farther and my memory drifted to a funeral that I attended about three years ago. Actually I was more of a participant than an attendee.  I was asked to be a pall bearer for the service of an elderly man at our church that had passed away from natural causes perhaps but really more than that, from age. The man was probably in his nineties. I had witnessed this man month after month  and for years take his seat at the right-hand end of the front and center row during the eight A.M. mass service. I imagined him to be a quiet, godly man, a mannered man, a man I expected to be there forever I suppose. Well it turns out he wasn't there forever. He died, as all people do, and now I was helping to bury him. I didn't know his name until I heard it during the service. I was sorry about that. Now I'm not going to launch into a lecture about how we should all appreciate our neighbor and get to know them before it's too late. That's probably never going to happen. The thing I can't get out of my mind is that after the cemetary gathering when we pall bearers were all talking about him  one of the guys just casually mentioned that this guy had been a personal secretary to Douglass McArther during the war. Someone else verified that statement. I was floored!  What I wouldn't have given to have know this, to have sought him out for conversation. So I guess my message here is that what the General said in his famous speech at West Point really is true: "Old soldiers never die, they just fade away".  That's true for old soldiers. That's true for old friends. That's true for everything living. When we ignore people we miss a lot. I helped bury a piece of living history, but maybe that's not all. I buried a quiet, well-mannered, godly man. I don't know if that fades away nearly as fast. I sure hope it doesn't.