ETERNITY

March 1992

I walked into the chapel with weak knees and shallow breath ready to experience death, up close and very personal. Every part of my being was screaming no!!!! This can’t be happening. This can’t be true. The casket, lying open in front of me held the body of my closest friend and greatest comrade. My brother. 

His young frame lying motionless and the mortician tried to prepare him to look “life like”. He tried but failed terribly. We chose my brothers clothes to suit him even down to the blue and white KC baseball cap. My brother never wore this cap normal, he wore it backwards. But how would the guy preparing him know because He never knew him. I came closer to my brothers lifeless body and removed the hat off his head which made the mortician very uneasy. There was still blood on the back of his head and on his cap which most likely remained from the autopsy, but that didn’t matter. I turned it around and began to speak to him, saying, “There, Now that’s looks better. 

Another conversation began within my mind as I stared at him. “He’s not here. All this is is an empty shell.  And If he is not here then where is he?  His spirit. Gone. 

Now more than ever eternity began to make more sense to me. Eternity past, eternity future…eternity NOW!!! It was like seeing a line in one direction as an eternity past and another line the other direction as eternity future and I was standing in eternity present. Eternity doesn’t begin when we die. We are living in eternity. The present reality of eternity in this very moment. 

I am experiencing eternity this very breath. And in my brothers life, in one breath he was here on earth and in the next breath he was experiencing a spiritual realm any of us have yet to obtain. That is how close we are to experiencing the reality of eternity.

A thin veil between this world and the next. One single breath. 

I remember a story of another veil. A veil that was torn. A veil that was torn so we too could be apart of something greater than ourselves. A spiritual realm where we could be given spiritual eyes to see. And spiritual ears to hear. A place where we could walk with God and where all of eternity becomes heaven on Earth for the rest of my life.