Keep Living

Eric was wearing his Navy dress blues. His 6-year-old daughter, Kailey, stood by the casket, slowly raised her arms, and placed Eric’s sailor hat on his chest.

This was the first time Eric’s two daughters had experienced death. If one of her tears fell on her father, Kailey wondered, would it make him smile? If she prayed hard enough, would God put his spirit back in his body?
No, her mother answered. “That’s not the way life works,” Geodee tried to explain.

After a military gun salute, the bugler’s cry echoed into an empty sky. The color guard carefully lifted the American flag draped over Eric’s casket, folded it with perfection, and presented it to Geodee and the two girls.

In a bronze urn with the Navy seal, Eric had his homecoming — to a place next to Geodee’s bed.

Starting over will not be easy for Eric’s family — a fine line between trying to heal while still remembering. His wife wonders how to keep his memory alive for their children.

Others have endured the same. She knows it will be all right.

Because, in the end, all we can do is keep living.