Are There Special Souls?

...as to why it is that it seems that only the good die young -- my mother at 48, for instance? That is young, or, as we said then, too young to die.

As a 12-year-old, I believed my mother was ancient at 48, and I truly could not understand people saying she was 'too young" to die. All I knew was that she was my mother, and she should not have died.

With today's technologies, she would have lived longer. How much longer we can only conjecture. All I knew for sure is that four daughters and a husband outlived her. My oldest sister died at 74. I now have an 80-year-old sister and a 72-year-old sister. I was the baby and sometimes it shows.

We were told, at my mother's death, that God needed her there in Heaven. We all -- all the family, all the congregation, most of the town's population -- agreed. Selfishly, I thought I needed her more.

I loved her more than any human on earth but carried plenty of guilt around for years for having hastened her demise.

I have grown older. Wiser, I don't know. But I wonder why her, and not us. There has to be Someone up there making such decisions.

And so we wonder. And question. And try to learn, all the while knowing there is no knowing.

Thank you for your essay.

Thank you SF for sharing that. I find it curious that I find such things curious enough to write about them. Another unknown.