Mortality is becoming a theme. Probably many of us are now aware of the disease impacting someone with both a name and a face. Someone we care about and want to make it through to the other side. 

 

Of this pandemic, not heaven. 

 

Though the inevitability of that consequence has leap frogged from hypothetical to stark reality. 

 

I recall the moment in Little Women when Laurie whisks Amy away in a carriage to protect her from scarlet fever. She tells him who should get her prized ring when she dies. I have been making such deliberations quietly, as I look at unfinished quilt tops and my featherweights. I imagine my grown children walking through the house, after John and I are gone, perusing the evidence of our three score and some years on this planet. They will tsk tsk at the scrambled closets, and pick through the stacks of books. What will they feel even as they are burdened with our half done projects? 

 

But what if we didn't have a chance to say goodbye? To hug one more time, and express the inexpressible affection that has bottled up in this moment of quarantine. I say "moment" not to minimize the enormity of our shared losses, but to remind myself that a month, or three, or even ten times that span takes on a different proportion when poised next to eternity. 

 

"There shall be no more death neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain. For the former things have passed away." Revelation 21