Life is filled with many wonders, some shrouded in golden ecstasy while others forever etched with tears from tortured souls. It is an arduous and exhilarating labor, long and short, hopeful and hopeless, fulfilling and fleeting, and promising and forsaking.
Life begins with a scream and ends with a moan, loves one day and hates the next, promises the world with one hand and waves goodbye with the other. Somewhere in between these dynamics, babies are being born and people dying, lovers are marrying and the disillusioned divorcing, families building up and discord knocking down, adults fighting and children hurting. Such is life.
Mature life begins with shy smiles, cuddling looks, love oozing from the seams of passion, pure innocence in all its meant-to-be fashion. Then babies are snuggling from the breast, prideful glances exchanged, cooing and oh-so-gentle touches of love, and brief bliss and fulfillment. Home was security until a thing called war bombed the soul out of young hearts just beginning their walk down the aisle of life.
The eruption of a foolhardy war blasted on the idyllic scene and in a few short years, family units deteriorate into shambles, love turns to hate, children tremble in frightening anguish; parents divorce, bitterly forging a sword of despair and unforgiveness into once solid family trees—forever. Like animated ghosts of the past, fathers and mothers trod wearily along what’s left of life, separated by wounds too deep to heal and too long ago to remember.
Children are resilient but deeply hurt nonetheless. They reach adulthood and marry, clinging dearly to high hopes, bearing young and slowly beginning their family trees. But all too soon they realize that, “Life begins with a scream and ends with a moan, loves one day and hates the next, promises the world with one hand and waves goodbye with the other.”
A story told by an angel on the wing, carrying heavenward life’s shattered things.
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