Farewell to Arms

   This past week, my Great-Aunt June went home to be with our Lord.

   Auntie June was mentally handicapped. This made her a gentler person than many who have their whole minds, though in her life she never got to experience the many things we take for granted: marriage and children, education, financial stability and independence. It seems a terrible cruelty that she lived so long, yet knew so little. But I know that she was loved by her family. I used to love it when she took my brother and I to the park as children. I remember her sitting on the bench, not really watching us play, the radio beside her playing the old Hawaiian songs she so enjoyed with simplicity.

   And now God has given her the blessing of new mind and an incorruptible body, and a true home so unlike the place where she died. She had her own unique troubles in this life, but her time came to lay down the arms of suffering and take up the mantle of eternal life.

   I only recently found out about Auntie June's death and as I was driving home a few nights ago, I remembered these old, old words:

 



I have heard of a land on a far away strand,
’Tis the beautiful home of the soul;
Built by Jesus on high, where we never shall die,
’Tis a land where we'll never grow old.

 

In that beautiful home where we’ll never more roam,
We shall be in the sweet by and by;
Happy praise to the King through eternity sing,
’Tis a land where we never shall die.

 

When our work here is done and our life crown is won,
And our troubles and trials are o’er;
All our sorrow will end, and our voices will blend,
With the loved ones who’ve gone on before.

 

Never grow old, never grow old,
In a land where we’ll never grow old;
Never grow old, where we'll never grow old,
In a land where we’ll never grow old.

 

   I wish that I could be with my family in Hawaii, but distances separate. Oh for the Day when nothing will separate us from our loved ones, from those who have gone on before, anymore.

 

   Rest well, Auntie June. We'll meet again some sunny Day.

 

   ~norton