I don't know which walk I prefer - that among the living or that among the dead. I can drive five minutes and be down by the Tennessee River...Crossing the bridge, encircled by the hills, and passing by runners, moms with strollers, more leisurely pedestrians....Beautiful reflections in the water, breeze on my face, lively, stirring - the best of life.

But then there are my friends, the dead. I can walk five minutes and climb a bank from road to cemetery. Then I go up, up, up a series of ridges and roads until I am on top of the world. I look around and see hilltops in every direction. And I am in the sky with them, surrounded only by granite, shrubs, and other people's memories. Quiet, pensive, "intimations of mortality" - the "best" of death.

I love them both. And I always wonder when I walk... How many of the living are dead and how many of the dead are living? What a wondrous thing it is to live in two worlds. But how much better to live in that which is coming - where death will be swallowed up by life, and every day a child's day of delight in waking up and finding himself strong and healthy with nothing but wonders ahead of him...

I'm waiting!