LIFE ON EARTH IS AS SHORT AS A BREATH - Sarah Curl

It begins in mystery and ends in mystery.We enter the world crying, gasping for air, and one day we leave it with a sigh, returning, perhaps, to the same quiet we came from.

Between those two moments lies everything: joy and sorrow, love and loss, laughter and pain. We are like twins in the womb, living in a world we think we understand, not knowing that beyond the veil of what we see lies something more.

There’s an old story about twins in their mother’s womb. They live in warmth and safety, nourished by a cord that gives them all they need.

One asks, “Do you think there’s life after birth?”The other laughs. “Of course not. This is all there is—food, warmth, and comfort. What more could there be?”

“Maybe,” says the first, “we’re being prepared for something greater,light, air, and the mother who has cared for us all along.”“The mother?” says the other. “I’ve never seen her.”“She’s all around us,” the first replies. “Without her, we wouldn’t exist.”

Time passes, and the twins feel the stirrings of birth. Their small world tightens and the pressure increases, and they cry, “This is the end!”But then the first is born, into light and air, into a world more beautiful than she could ever have imagined, and there, waiting for her, is the loving face of her mother.

We are like those twins.We live in this world as if it were all there is, If we could speak of what lies beyond death, perhaps it would sound just like that conversation, full of fear, disbelief, and wonder.

We may be afraid to leave the only life we know, even as something deep within whispers that there is more. Perhaps death is not an ending, but a journey an emergence, into  a larger  spiritual life, into light and into love.

Still,  we fear the unknown. When loss comes close, when grief sits beside us, that fear can be overwhelming.

What do we do when life becomes difficult, when our hearts break, and the world no longer feels like home? What do we do when we hold in our arms a dearly loved creature, a pet, a parent, a partner, a child, and feel life slowly ebbing away?

In that moment, we are helpless. We cannot stop time. We can only love, fiercely, tenderly, until love itself must let them go.

On Friday, my daughter and I held our faithful little dog Lucy as she was dying. Her breathing slowed, her eyes grew dim, and all we could do was whisper “thank you, thankyou  for the joy and love, the adventures, the years together”. It was heartbreak, the kind that hollows you out. And yet, even in that quiet space of loss, there was love: raw, real, sacred.

C.S. Lewis understood that kind of love and sorrow. In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, he wrote of Aslan—the Christ-figure—humiliated and killed yet risen in glory. He said,“If you’ve been up all night and cried till you have no more tears left in you, you will know that there comes in the end a sort of quietness. You feel as if nothing was ever going to happen again.”

That quietness is not peace, not yet. It is the stunned stillness that follows loss, when the world seems drained of colour and sound.And yet, within that silence, God waits.

Richard Adams, in Watership Down, wrote of death with such gentleness. Hazel, the wise rabbit, dies peacefully of old age. His spirit is taken by El-ahrairah to join the Owsla beyond this world. Adams writes, “Like the pain of a bad wound, the effect of a deep shock takes some while to be felt.”

When a child first learns that someone has died, there is that same bewilderment. “Where have they gone? When are they coming back?”It is only slowly that the truth takes root.

Perhaps that is why so many of us first encounter death through the small creatures we love—the hamsters, the rabbits, the goldfish of childhood. Their short lives teach us gently that all things pass. It is a hard lesson, but it teaches compassion, gratitude, love.

All around us, creation tells the same story. The leaves change, green to gold to brown to dust, and then, somehow, life begins again. There are seasons for everything: birth and growth, loss and renewal.

We carry our memories like autumn leaves, beautiful, fragile, fading.We grieve not only for those we have lost, but for the moments we can never reclaim: the days that passed too quickly, the words left unsaid, the embraces not given.

We grieve, too, for time itself, for the way our children grow and change, for the innocence that slips away. We remember them when they were little, when life was all wonder and discovery, when they believed in the tooth fairy and Father Christmas, when magic was real and trust was simple.How I Iong sometimes to go back to those days, when love was uncomplicated and the world was full of promise.

Grief takes many forms. We grieve for people, but also for ourselves, for dreams unfulfilled, for relationships unresolved, for roads not taken. We grieve for the things we didn’t know, for the ways we might have loved better, spoken more gently, if only we had understood.

And always, beneath it all, there is fear, the fear of the unknown.What lies beyond this life? What happens when breath ceases and the heart is still?

Faith gives us hope, but it does not erase the ache of uncertainty. Even Jesus, facing death, was troubled in spirit. Yet in that grief, we discover something profound: love is stronger than death.

Love does not end. It changes, deepens, becomes memory, presence, spirit. Faith may bring us hope, but it does not remove our pain. Love comes at a cost, the cost we feel most deeply when those we love are taken from us.

But God does not ask us to deny that pain. God receives it. There is room in God’s heart for all of it, our anger, confusion, sorrow, and questions. Our God is a tender God, one who knows what it is to weep, one who holds us when we can no longer hold ourselves together.

Christ said, “Abide in me, and I in you.”In grief, that is what we are called to do—to abide in Him, to remain connected to the source of love and life even when we cannot see the way ahead. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit unless it abides in the vine, neither can we live fully unless we remain in the love that holds us through birth, life and death alike.

And so, as we gather tonight remembering those who have gone before us, we do not come in despair, but in faith. We come with tears and thanksgiving. We come holding the stories, the laughter, the light our loved ones brought into our lives. 

In the Gospel of John Jesus say’s in my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way to the place where I am going.”

Tonight we remember those who now rest in the Fathers house.We give thanks for their lives, their friendship, their presence among us.We grieve because we loved, and love, as the apostle Paul reminds us, never ends.

And so we hold on to that hope: that one day, when our own time comes, we too will pass through that veil into light; that we will be known and loved and gathered in; that all that has been broken will be mended, and all that has been lost will be found.

Until that day, we live.We love.We remember.And we trust that beyond all our endings, there is God—and that God is love.

Amen.