Death is never pleasant to deal with. Even if preceeded by a long illness, the finality of death never fails to shock the very core of one's being.

Recently I have had to say a final good bye to three people close to me - a beloved aunt, a dear brother-in-law and a precious friend and sister in Christ. If I have learned one thing from their passing it is the importance of spending time with those you love so that once they are gone you are left with many memories. And to ensure these memories are happy ones, the moments we spend together have to be happy. Why waste precious, limited time in conflict with those close to us, especially family members?

Even worse, sometimes we choose to neglect them completele and console ourselves by 'thinking' of them. That's not enough. We need to let them know we are thinking of them. Technology has made this so easy and inexpensive to do, there's no excuse. 

It's why the Bible tells us to visit the sick, clothe the naked and feed the hungry. Also to honour our parents and love our neighbours. None of this can be done effectively without spending face-to-face time  with them.

We are often inclined to laugh off the elderly, arrogantly believing that because we are physically and mentally in better shape than they are that this automatically makes us intellectually superior and gives us the right to condescend to them. Ironically, we blame our children for doing the same to us, yet how can we expect otherwise if that's the example we set?

So if I want to create happy memories of those I expect to outlive I need to spend less time squabbling with them and more time treating them with kindness, compassion and respect, as commanded to do in God's Word, even if I believe, or even know that they are being unfair, irrational, unreasonable or downright incorrigible.

After all, if I regard them as my loved ones, is that not how I should treat them - with love?