When Gloria Died

Gloria died.  Who knows why; who might offer an answer?  Maybe God knows, but if he does he is not saying.  It might have been different had she been old.  Her life would then have been ready to be over.  But it had just begun.  She was only twenty.  There was so much to be lived, so much to be offered, so much yet to do and be.  But instead she died, and I don't know why.

Later I asked God again, and I thought he told me this:  she loved life and people.  She didn't want to die.  She had not planned to, but she was not so surprised when it happened, not as unhappy as we might wish she had been.  She just went on being happy in another place, a different way.  She was joy and laughter and love.  She still is.

We are sad because she died, but are better for her having lived.  We are better people and more ourselves for having been loved by her, and for the life shared with her.

Of course, we will cry.  With her death we lost a lot.  But we are going to live and will laugh again.  The question is maybe less why did she die than why she had lived.  She left us, but gave more than a memory of death and sadness.  She gave her life and love which cannot be forgotten.  It cannot die.