Death is inevitable yet most of the time we prop up the illusion that we will slip out only when it is convenient and our affairs are tidied up. But Death guffaws at our ignorance and does what he jolly well chooses. 

I do believe that God has the final say in the timing of our entrances and exits on this transitory home called Earth, regardless of our overblown sense of autonomy. Yet like the earthquake that rattled Chile this week the effects reverberate over the horizon.

Both men have women and children who adore them, people who as recently as last week picked up the phone to check in. But there are no calls now, except the ones at midnight that echo unanswered. 

I heard a speaker this week who knows something I am trying to learn. We human beings are no more separate than our fingers are from our lungs. Yes, you can point to one rather than another but the life that pulses through them cannot be stopped. It certainly appears that it stopped for these two men. Their bodies no longer house them. 

But their lives are still surging with a force that no defibrillator can leash or unleash.