"To die would be an awful big adventure!"

Peter Pan says it to Captain Hook as he's caught in Hook's clutches.

Death doesn't scare me, or seem bad to me. When I know that someone is dying I almost feel excited. It's kind of like anticipating the birth of a baby.

The dying itself—these months of illness, of not healing, of worrying, watching, waiting—that is hard. Losing your friend, your family, your mother—that is very hard.

But knowing there are people who will greet her and who love her—that is exciting! Who will hold her first when she arrives? Will it be her mother, like when she arrived here? What will she learn? What kind of work will God give her to do? Isn't that exciting to consider?

It really is just like a birth. Painful, laborious, and difficult for us, the mortals who are involved. Scary for the one who is leaving one existence to be born into another.

I guess the difference is that we spend so much time planning for and anticipating a birth. Funny that death always seems to take us by surprise. We have a lifetime to prepare for it, but we hardly give it a thought. We are so easily distracted. This life is the time to prepare to meet God; we can't meet Him without passing through death. But we are so busy with life that we don't think of it.
Are we preparing?

Now, as our hearts are open and tender—as my heart is open and tender—now I think of it and want to prepare, and want to be good, and want to be as ready as anyone can be.

Will that feeling stay with me as this tenderness, these labor pains, wear off and become a memory?