This week’s episode takes a detour. I had planned to talk about morality, but life redirected me. My godmother recently passed away at 101, and her death pulled me into the oldest of human questions: what happens after we die?

Across traditions, answers vary: heaven and hell, reincarnation, ancestral return, legacy in memory. But from a humanist lens, death is final. And that doesn’t make life meaningless. Instead, it makes it urgent.

In this episode, I touch on:

• How different cultures and religions wrestle with death
• Why a humanist view of mortality isn’t bleak, but clarifying
• Lessons from a century-long life well lived
• Simple secular practices for remembering the dead and reflecting on our own lives

This isn’t about doctrine. It’s about presence. About living deeply, loving well, and leaving behind a footprint that matters, not for eternity, but for the people and communities we touch right now.

Reflection Questions

• What do you believe happens after we die?
• What would you want your living eulogy to say today?

Next Episode

We’ll take this further: if you don’t believe in an afterlife, is there still room for spirituality? Can there be a sense of the sacred without religion?

No gods. No guilt. Just the work of being human.

No gods, no guilt, just

the work of being human.

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This is Live Good, Walk Good.

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And I'm your host Bianca.

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Let's talk about living

well without religion.

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This week I had planned to bring

you an episode about morality, how

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we decide what's right and wrong

without relying on scripture.

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But life has a way of redirecting us.

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My godmother passed away recently,

at the age of 101 years old.

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Imagine , more than a

full century of life.

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She was a woman of faith, deeply

Christian, steady in her belief in heaven

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and the promise of life after death.

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She prayed every day and she never doubted

where she was going after this life.

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When I think about her, I

don't just think about her age.

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I think about her sharp wit and stubborn

independence or the way she still insisted

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on baking mince pies every Christmas,

her open welcome to everyone who turned

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up at her door to join her for some tea.

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She was steady, strong, and

absolutely certain of her faith.

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Her passing has me thinking

about what happens after we

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die and does it really matter?

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I find myself reflecting not on

heaven nor hell, but on what it

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means to live a good life, when

our time here is all we truly know.

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Because whether you believe in heaven

and its pearly gates, reincarnation,

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ancestors watching over us or simply

the finality of the quiet return

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of your body to the earth, we all

face the same fact of morality.

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Our time here is limited, and that to me

is not a reason for despair or depression.

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It's cause for clarity, it means

the measure of a life isn't

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written in some eternal ledger.

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It's written in the choices we

make and the way we live every day.

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It's in how we love, how we show

up, how we leave the world just

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a little better than we found it.

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So today I'm going to start

to explore the biggest of big

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questions, death itself, not from a

place of fear, but with curiosity.

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Because this episode

is not about doctrine.

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It's about something

deeper and maybe scarier.

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The reality of mortality.

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If death is the end, then the

question becomes what makes life

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meaningful while we have it?

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Because maybe what matters

most is not what comes after,

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but how we live right now.

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So let's get into it.

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What happens when we die?

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It's a question that has haunted

humanity for as long as we've

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been able to bury our dead.

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Every culture, every religion has wrestled

with it, trying to make sense of the

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silence that follows a last breath.

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In Christianity, which shaped my

godmother's life, the story is heaven or

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hell, judgment, then reward or punishment.

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In Hinduism and Buddhism, it's

reincarnation: life as a cycle, a return,

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the soul moving into another form.

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In many African and indigenous

traditions, it's ancestral return.

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The dead don't vanish.

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They stay present, guiding,

protecting us, demanding remembrance.

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Secular visions of death tend to

focus on legacy and memory on the ways

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our lives echo forward in the people

that we've touched, the communities

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we've shaped, the love we've given.

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Here in the Caribbean.

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We carry a powerful mix

of all of those ideas.

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Death is communal.

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We don't just bury the body, we gather, we

sing, we dance, we drink, we keep watch.

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The nine night, which I've mentioned

before, it's part wake, part storytelling,

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part resistance against silence.

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I can remember one nine night,

where the air was thick with rum and

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somebody said, "if yuh nuh talk bout

the dead, them spirit get restless."

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That line stayed with me because it's not

theology, it's this community psychology.

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It says, remembrance is how

we keep our people alive.

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It says, you may be gone, but

your presence is still with us.

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So what does a humanist say standing

at the edge of the same mystery?

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We say death is final.

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There is no next chapter waiting.

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But that doesn't make life meaningless.

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It makes life urgent.

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It sharpens the value of every moment

we have because when the book closes,

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the only thing that remains is the story

we've written in the time we were given.

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When someone lives to 101, you

can't help but ask, what does

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a good life actually look like?

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For my godmother, the answer

was shaped by her faith.

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To live well, meant to follow

God's word, to serve others,

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to be prepared for eternity.

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That was her anchor, and it

gave her a kind of certainty.

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She measured goodness, by obedience, by

devotion, by trust in what came after.

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For me, the measure is different.

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I don't believe there's a

ledger being kept in heaven.

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For me, a good life is measured not

by what happens after death, but

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by what happens while we're alive.

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By the relationships we build,

the care we give, the ways we face

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hardship without losing our humanity.

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When I look at her century of living, I

see resilience: surviving loss raising

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family, keeping traditions alive.

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She and her husband moved to Jamaica

nearly 70 years ago, leaving their home

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on the other side of the Caribbean.

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They built a life, started a family,

and raised their daughter together.

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She lost her husband decades

ago, and her daughter now lives

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abroad and started her own family.

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I see service, small acts of generosity

that ripple through a community.

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She never met a person or an

animal she wouldn't invite in.

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For many years, her home was often

kept open and when asked if she wasn't

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afraid of being robbed, her response

was they probably need it more than her.

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I see joy, the laugh, the stubborn

humor, the lightness even in old age.

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She played the piano well into her

nineties before her hands got too stiff.

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She loved music and dancing,

and always had a story or two

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to tell to those who gathered.

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And I see connection, from

simple tea to homemade treats, to

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warm hugs for everyone she met.

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The way people have been showing up to

honor her at the end is proof that love

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leaves a footprint no grave can cover.

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From a humanist perspective,

that's the heart of it.

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A good life isn't about earning

entry into an afterlife.

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It's about the footprint we leave

on the world we actually touch.

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The question is not where am I

going, but what am I building?

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What am I giving?

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How am I living right now?

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Because at the end, the things that

remain aren't promises of eternity.

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They are the echoes of our choices,

still moving through the people we've

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loved and the lives we've touched.

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When death feels close, it has a

way of pulling us into reflection.

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Religion often gives people

ready-made rituals for that:

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prayers, hymns, ceremonies.

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But we don't need belief in an afterlife

to create meaning in how we honor the

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dead or how we reflect on our own lives.

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So I want to offer two

simple practices you can try.

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They're humanist in nature.

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These rituals don't require

faith, just intention.

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The first is a living eulogy.

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Sit down with a piece of paper and

write what you'd want people to say

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about you if your life ended today.

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Are you living in a way that lines up

with the story you would want told?

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If not, what could you change

this week, this year, to bring

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those two things closer together?

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The second practice is about

gratitude for the dead.

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Think of someone who shaped

your life, maybe a family

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member, a teacher, a friend.

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You can light a candle for them or

simply speak their name out loud.

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Share a story about them with someone

else, or even just with yourself.

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You don't need to believe that they're

watching over you for the act to matter.

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The meaning is in the remembering.

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This is what I call humanist spirituality.

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It's not a prayer to the heaven,

but presence in the here and now.

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Forget promises of eternal life,

but make intentional choices to

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honor the lives that have touched

ours and to shape the kind of life

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we want to live while we still can.

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Death isn't a door to somewhere else.

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It's a reminder to fully

inhabit where we are.

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When I think of my godmother, what

stays with me isn't just her age.

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It's the lessons her life left behind:

the resilience she carried through

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a century of change, the service she

gave to her family and community,

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the joy that found her even in the

smallest things and the love that

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wrapped her life like a thread binding

people together across generations.

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Those lessons endure, not because she's

watching from above, but because they

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live on in the people who knew her, in

the ways we carry forward her example.

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That's legacy.

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That's immortality in a humanist sense.

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And it reminds me that the measure

of a life is not how long it

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is, but how deeply it is lived.

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So as we close, I invite you

to ask yourself, what depth

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are you bringing to your days?

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What story are you writing

in the time that you have?

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Because the book ends for all of us.

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The only question is what

kind of story we leave behind.

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I would love to hear your

reflections on this one.

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What would you want your living eulogy to

say about the way you're living right now?

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You can share your thoughts

with me on social media, or

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send me a message directly.

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I read every one.

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Because these aren't

just abstract questions.

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They're the heart of what it means to live

good and walk good, right here, right now.

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And next time we'll take this

conversation a step further.

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If you don't believe in heaven

or an afterlife, is there

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still room for spirituality?

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Can there be a sense of the

sacred without religion?

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We'll explore what secular

sacredness might look like and how

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to practice it in everyday life.

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I had planned to spend this week

talking about morality, about how we

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decide what's right and wrong without

scripture, and we will come back to that.

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But losing my godmother reminded me

that before we argue over ethics,

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we have to face the bigger truth.

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We are mortal.

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She lived a century of

life grounded in her faith.

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She believed in heaven, in

seeing loved ones again.

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I don't share that belief, but I

do share the conviction that a life

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can be meaningful, not because of

what comes after, but because of

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what we create while we're here.

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I know that her life mattered, not because

of where she thought she was going,

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but because of what she left behind.

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When we strip away the promise of

eternity, we are left with something

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raw and beautiful: this life.

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The one we're in right now.

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The laughter that lingers in memory, the

kindness that ripples forward, the love

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that changes us and then changes others.

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Death isn't a loophole into something

greater, it's the final punctuation mark,

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and knowing that makes the sentences

in between, the days, the choices, the

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relationships, all the more important.

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So I'll leave you with this thought.

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The best way to prepare for death is

not by worrying about what comes after.

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It's by living so fully, so honestly

that when your time comes, the story you

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leave behind is one worth remembering.

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So until next time: live good, walk good.