Farewell To A Friend

Last week Larry and I said good-bye to a long time friend, Keith Ohlson. He is now with the Lord. At his funeral Larry read a quote from a book that I thought was excellent. I would like to share it here.

I bought a brand-new date book yesterday, the kind I use every year- sprial bound, black imitation leather covers wrapped around pages and pages of blank boxes. Every square has a number to tell me which day of the month I'm in at the moment. Every square is a frame for one episode of my life. Before I'm through with the book, I will fill the squares with classes I teach, people with whom I ate lunch, everlasting committee metings I sit through, and these are only the things I cannot afford to forget. I fill the squares too with things I do not write down to rememer: thousands of cups of coffee, some lovemaking, some praying, and, I hope, gestures of help to my neighbors. Whatever I do, it has to fit inside one of those squares on my date book. I live one square at a time. The four lines that make up the box are the walls of time that organize my life. Each box has an invisible door that leads to the next square. As if by a silent stroke, the door opens and I am pulled through as if by a magnet, sucked into the next square in line; there I will again fill the time frame that seals me - fill it with my busy-ness just as I did the square before. As I get older, the squares seem to get smaller. One day I will walk into a square that has no door. There will be no mysterious opening and no walking into an adjoining square. One of those squares will be terminal. I do not know which square it will be.

There are only two options about the final square. One is that it turns out to be a coffin or the second possibility is that when we walk into that final square, it isn't a box at all; it turns out to be a door. The four walls that have confined us melt away, and time is no more. And our real life, far rom being over, turns out to have just begun. (Taken from John Ortberg's book, "When The Game Is Over It All Goes Back In The Box")

We will miss Keith, but his life has just begun!