A close friend of ours died recently. Those of us who loved him have just left the shock and are now into the prolonged sadness period. One wonders why the good die young while the bad linger on and on.
Yet there is one fail-safe comfort: that the good moments of a life well lived can never be cancelled by death or even by oblivion, If you've ever read a good book, done a good dead, had a good party, or taught a good class, say, nothing can erase that. Listen to Alexander Pope's adaptation of an ode by the Roman poet Horace:
Happy are they,
and happy they alone:
they who can call today their own:
they who, secure within, can say,
"tomorrow do your worst, for we have. had today."
Heaven itself on the past has no power,
for what has been has been,
and we have had our hour.
