This is not one of those subjects anyone likes to talk about for many reasons. It’s tragic, painful, and we see it as a loss, yet it is something we will all experience one way or another. My father once told me, “There are two things you can be assured of; paying taxes and death.”

As I get older I find myself missing more and more my family members who are long gone. Grandma Choo Choo (she was called that because whenever she would come to visit she came on the train and at 5 years old the train went choo choo, hence “here comes grandma on the choo choo”) She died when I was 7; that was my first experience with death.

Death seems so final, so cold that some would rather use the term “Passed” or “Departed”; others don’t even want to talk about it and yet death is very much a part of life.

I presently am not planning on dying but none of us ever do. Throughout the movie “Little Big Man” Old Lodge Skins, keeps on saying; “Today is a good day to die.” Not only am I not planning on it, I do everything, well almost everything I can to stay healthy.

I remember one day going exploring with some friends in the desert here in Israel and some how we wound up in an area where Palestinians lived. Old Lodge Skins words kept coming to mind; “Today is a good day to die.”

I was once told that death is really not death, but rather birth into eternity. Sure when I die, I don’t want it to hurt but after that first nano second in eternity I will never remember whether it hurt or not. I don’t remember the day I was born and yet I am told that my birth was a very painful experience not only for my mother but for me as well… but I don’t remember.

The day I was born grandma Choo Choo and all my relatives were already here and when I am born into eternity once again they will already be there; could it be, this life here is just a practice run to see where I will spend eternity. One day, a day only G-D knows I will be born into eternity.

Some believe “All roads lead to G-D” and that everyone will go to heaven. Others will vehemently disagree with you about that. Today I am in the camp of the “All roads lead to G-D” and that everyone will go to heaven” group, but with one small twist.

We will all see G-D, we will all make it to heaven; the question is, whether we will be staying or not! What will G-D say to us and how will we answer Him? The answer we give may very well determine whether we stay in heaven or not. Could it be that is why G-D had King David pen these following words?

“For He is our G-D, And we are the people of His pasture, And the sheep of His hand. Today, if you will hear His voice: “Do not harden your hearts, as in the rebellion, As in the day of trial in the wilderness, When your fathers tested Me; They tried Me, though they saw My work. For forty years I was grieved with that generation, And said, ‘It is a people who go astray in their hearts, And they do not know My ways.’ So I swore in My wrath, ‘They shall not enter My rest.