Once Upon a Time...

There was a tall, strong youth with a lively wit and a promising new career who fell in love with a beautiful and wealthy girl. They married and made a life together, and soon they were expecting a child. The child, a girl, was stillborn, and was never given a name. Her mother, body taxed by the pregnancy and its complications, passed away three days later. Her wealthy family, distraught over her loss, made all of the funeral arrangements, burying her in finery in a glass coffin.

The young man was heartbroken, but he carried on with his life.

In two years' time, he was engaged to be married, this time, to the best friend of the one he had loved and lost: a woman without flashy good looks, but with a strong constitution and a good sensible head on her shoulders. The two settled down to life together, had several children, and, eventually, dozens of grandchildren. They were never affluent, but they did their best in life, and they left a legacy of honest, virtuous living for their posterity.

The man never spoke to anyone about the one he had lost. Not, that is, until one day, decades later, when he opened the door to his history as he tinkered on an old tractor engine. His grandson had just shared that he had taken a real liking to a Swedish girl of his acquaintance. He replied, "I really liked a girl too, once. I married her..." And thus, for the first time, was this true tale told aloud in the light of day.

The man lived an honorable life and to a ripe old age. When he died, he left instructions for his widow. He was to be buried without fanfare, and without any trappings of life.... including clothing, in the simplest coffin money could buy, a man-sized cardboard box.

I couldn't help but think of the obvious contrasts when hearing this true story recounted to me by the grandson who had been there on the day when the family secret became something that could be told without hush and speculation. She was wealthy and taken early from life, buried in the most extravagant of ways. Her life became a secret that was only whispered behind closed doors. He was of modest means -- a hard worker, but not privileged -- of advanced age. He left this life in the simplest way our culture will bear. He's remembered freely and openly, and the wife of his second chance was loved and honored as family matriarch until a still more advanced age, and is similarly remembered with honesty and candor.

Of course, this all begs the question of what really matters in life. I suppose the answer is obvious... as obvious as the fate that befell the young woman plucked from life so young and so tragically, and with such a fairy tale flair in all of its detail.

We leave the stuff of our lives behind, ripe for the recounting, whether we exit in finery or simplicity, in glass caskets or cardboard. And when we arrive at heaven's gates, we all arrive in the same condition: in need of boundless mercy.