Death where is your sting!

 "Behold, I shew you a mystery; 

We shall not all sleep, 

but we shall all be changed. 

In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, 

at the last trump: 

for the trumpet shall sound, 

and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, 

and we shall be changed. 

Then shall be brought to pass 

the saying that is written, 

Death is swallowed up in victory. 

O death, where is thy sting? 

O grave, where is thy victory?"

Johannes Brahms "Ein Deutsches Requiem: Denn wir haben hie keine bleibende Statt" 

Brahms requiem is one of my favourite pieces of music to sing, as an alto I have some really cracking parts. I have sung it in choir quite a few times, it never gets old. I first sang it when I still wasn't fluent in German so most of the words didn't have as strong an impact as they do now but the music itself transmits its message even without the words. I had seen it just as that, a beautiful piece of music until recently that I witnessed death close at hand. The days that followed were a blur and a fog settled over me making it impossible to do anything but survive the day. I am still coming out of that fog but in the middle of that fog came these words of this song sung so many times as a simple piece of music but this time their meaning came through. Music and singing are therapy for the soul, it elevates the mind and soul beyond the mundane world to those sights that only God can grant us. So there I was in the middle of the fog and all I wanted was to listen to and sing this beautiful masterpiece. 

The thing about death is that it boggles the mind. Especially if the person that dies was close to you, their presence haunts every familiar corner and you expect them at any moment to enter the room. So the mind struggles to comprehend, to accept, that that person is gone.  Your heart breaks with an incomprehensible pain that nothing in life prepares you for. And yet life continues, you continue and you must continue and so does the person who has passed away, they continue in you not just in memory but through what they taught you. Death does not have the last word, for believers Christ resurrected and death did not triumph, but also for those that might not believe death does not have the last word, as long as the person that is gone remains in you he has not died. And so you continue because they would not have wanted you to stop, to leave your life because they are gone. Life continues one day at a time.