I’m in mourning. Pray for me. -JBH

I believe once you become conscious of your own mortality, you fight for immortality.
You change diet, illuminate stress, sleep more… doing anything to stop the clock or wind it back in a few years.
The great sadness of it all is that we know and ultimately this is futile. Will know there will be one day where the Reaper will come for us… Yet, we hope that the day is a long time off.
That day, where the world will miss us, and we will no longer be in the world, yet prepare for the Great Getting-Up Morning.
We expect those in our world to be a part of our lives as much as they can as long as they can.
We speak to their hopes: so their heart don’t fail.
We sow into the talents: so they may not be discouraged.
We ask them to stay. We plead with him to stay!
We believe God with them, for them, to stay.
And yet they slip through our fingers in early mornings. Or late nights. When we leave the room unattended.
They leave because they’re tired. Or uncertain. And we are forced into mourning clothes. And pray they don’t fit too tight.
Life is steady, linear… And unfair. Yet for the great unfairness of it all, perhaps it is best that we not walk the clock too closely.
Which makes us forget the Reaper is there…holding it.
-JBHarris, January 2023
Written after the death of my adopted brother LeArthur Antonio Lee at age 40.