When I Die...

"And when he dies, take him and cut him out in little stars and he will make the face of heaven so fine that all will fall in love with the night and pay no attention to the garish sun."

Okay, so it's been a while since I first read Romeo and Juliet in the 8th grade, and I may not have remembered the lines in the perfect iambic pentameter, but these lines came to my mind yesterday as I was thinking about death. A morose topic, I know, but it came to me as I was thinking of Lent and that "ashes to ashes" business we went through on Ash Wednesday. I know I'm going to die one day, and the more I think about it, the more comfortable I feel about it. It doesn't mean that I'm looking forward to it, but I've accepted the fact that I'm not going to live forever.

I read a magazine article about a woman whose husband died of liver disease about 3 years into their marriage, and what she said echoed the same thing one of my friends said after she lost her grandfather:

Tell someone "I love you."

I don't know where I"ll be when I take my last breath, but I do know that when it happens, I want to know just two things:

1.) That my time on earth wasn't wasted
2.) That the loved ones that I've left behind won't be afraid to tell someone "I love you" in my memory.

So while I was thinking of those lines from Romeo and Juliet, I hope my passing doesn't transpire so tragically. And when it's my time, I want people to think of these lyrics:



Everywhere I go, every smile I see, I know you are there, smiling back at me. Dancing in moonlight, I know you are free 'cause I can feel your star shining down on me.