When the time comes,
just say 'I'm passing on my way'
I had never heard death described like that.
The radio DJ, announcing the death of a singer, said the artist "passed on his way.”
Passed on his way. . . how fitting a description.
"Passed on our way," as if to remind us that we began in one place, spent some time in this place, before heading on to the next place.
We weren’t just here then gone.
There was a purpose to our journey . . . or, as Og Mandino says in The Greatest Miracle in the World, “You are not the momentary whim of a careless creator experimenting in the laboratory of life . . . you have a purpose.”
We are on our way from somewhere to somewhere, and, along the way, we pass by here.
We do not “pass away,” for that implies what legacy we left passes away with us.
We do not “die.” That is so final, too final.
We pass on our way, and along that journey, have the time of our lives.
“And I leave you now, not with sadness but with satisfaction and joy that we came together and walked, arm in arm, through this brief moment of eternity. Who could ask for more?”
—The Ragpicker in The Greatest Miracle in the World
