Though the winds of the years had swept us far away
from one another, I learned two friends I grew up with
are dead.
I found their obituaries with some Internet searches
and was surprised and saddened to see they had died,
one at 78, the other at 79.
It was a reminder that in this life, nothing lasts. Friends who seemed as if forever one day are gone, and one day you are gone too
as well as everything else that existed in your passing life, gone from the world forever.
This is why it makes sense to me to set one’s sights and hopes on what seems a higher permanent world beyond this everchanging, worldly impermanence —
regardless of what you believe that higher permanent world to be.
Bob Boyd