We used to listen to an all-night radio program. The host, Jean Shepherd, would say, "If you're sitting alone tonight, in a quiet house, and listening to the sound the refrigerator makes, come on out and join us."
He mentioned an eating spot. On my eighteenth birthday, someone drove me out to the place, as a special treat. I got to meet my radio friend. He shook hands with me, congratulated me on my birthday, and said, "May you have sixty five more."
He is gone now and I am approaching my last days. I have learned about the refrigerator's sound. It's that quiet in my home. I forgo t v and radio. Too many breaks and too much froth for me. Silence can be good. But the pain closes in too. The pain of sorrow. So many have gone before me, some quite young.
Often, the sounds of their voices, and the images of these people is more real than the people surrounding me. Something has been lost in my life. Old photographs come alive, of people both young and full of life.
It seems so wrong that they have passed on and I remain. Even lost pets haunt me. My childhood dogs and cats who have lived and died so long ago.
I know the scriptures that promise all will be restored, all will be well. If it were not for these reassurances, I believe I would go insane.
Gerald, I understand completely your fourth paragraph. Although I approach the fifth decade of my life, my parents, one of my sons, and so many dear friends have moved on ahead. Although I have a husband and other children here on Earth, I often feel that the weight of all that I have waiting in Heaven is so much greater than the things which hold me here. I am not depressed. I am simply mindful of time passing and of the probability that the first fifty years are likely to be the best of my times on Earth. I too look forward to all promise being restored and for the glorious reunion which is to come in Heaven. I do my best here, but the date of that reunion, is set, and I feel it gently closing in.
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