Sunrise courtesy of Pixabay Sunrise, Sunset, Swiftly Go the Years Recently I attended a funeral Mass for my friend Steve from high school days. Many mutual friends attended, and much of his family, some of whom I knew, and some met that afternoon. We shared so many memories, stories, pictures, music, food, laughter, and some tears. Even a bit of genealogy and family history! The Sixties and Seventies when we all knew one another seemed so close, and yet eons ago. We've lost some friends along the way too, and their parents; and in that way it all seems like a distant past. And yet, as I re-introduced myself to so many, we're the same people we were, with more white or less hair, more wrinkles, some crutches and canes. The young ones playing or crying in the aisles of the church showed that life is moving on. In the words of Barbra Streisand,"memories may be beautiful and yet, what's too painful to remember we simply choose to forget. So it's the laughter we will re...

Image by  Suzanne Morris  from  Pixabay   In Flanders Fields BY   JOHN MCCRAE In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row,      That mark our place; and in the sky     The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below. We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,     Loved and were loved, and now we lie,         In Flanders fields. Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw     The torch; be yours to hold it high.     If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow         In Flanders fields. Human need to honor The need to remember our dead seems to be part of our human psyche. From prehistoric and Viking burial mounds to Egyptian tombs and Roman coffins, from Victorian mausoleums to battleground burials and monuments, humans from the beginning hav...