“Never” is a concept that tends to leave us mortals in the deep end of the pool, without our floaties.  The implausibility of “never” courses through our veins, singing in our ears with every heart beat, driving us to believe that it is impossible for life to end.  Whether it is heaven above or re-incarnation here, a continuity of living experience after death isn’t so much a hope as a well justified expectation, predicated on aeons of seasonal renewals which absorbed the yearning for divinity of our ancestors far longer than any of our most recent selection of deities.  With the apparently bottomless flow of time generously blunting both loss and triumph, “never” seems unlikely.

But of course, we are just playing hide and seek.  Inevitably, “never” will find us; life is composed of nothing but “never.”  It lives side by side with us, a parallel awareness counting the expiration of each luscious breath, patiently accumulating minutes on its side of the score card, waiting to welcome us with open arms, to discover what we’ve been doing, while we were away.