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In the Garden of Life

I met Miriam Mossoff through workshops I gave at The Wellness Community in Pasadena, California, a nonprofit support group for people with cancer and their families, and she became a good friend for more than a year before her death. One of the best memories I have of her happened when she spoke to the Board of Directors and said, "I may look fine to you, but I want you to know that physically I feel awful. I also want you to know that how I experience life doesn't come from my physical body, but from my spirit. And my spirit feels just fine."

I had the privilege of attending her memorial service, which included this reading as a prelude to the Kaddish. It is especially apt for those who, like Miriam, die sooner than they would have liked.

— Arlene F. Harder, MA, MFT, Editor-in-Chief

Death is not the enemy of life, but its friend, for it is the knowledge that our years are limited which makes them so precious. It is the truth that time is but lent to us which makes us, at our best, look upon our years as a trust handed out into our temporary keeping.

We are like children privileged to spend a day in a great park, a park filled with many gardens and playgrounds and azure-tinted lakes with white boats sailing upon the tranquil waves.

True, the day allotted to each one of us is not the same in length, in light, in beauty. Some children of earth are privileged to spend a long and sunlit day in the garden of the earth. For others the day is shorter, cloudier, and dusk descends more quickly as in a winter's tale.

But whether our life is a long summery day or a shorter wintery afternoon, we know that inevitably there are storms and squalls which overcast even the bluest heaven and there are sunlit rays which pierce the darkest autumn sky.

The day that we are privileged to spend in the great park of life is not the same for all human beings, but there is enough beauty and joy and gaiety in the hours, if we will but treasure them.