I WANT TO READ IT ALL!!!!

I just read the eulogy of Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple Computers,  written by his sister.  If you haven't read it make sure you do but have a tissue close by,  you'll need it.   I'm not a real technical person.  I'm not an Apple person.  In fact I've hardly read anything about Steve Jobs in my life although I did know who he was.  I have a cell phone and I can dial a phone number with the best of people but I have no idea how to send a text message.  In fact I hate to see people sending text,  their thumbs going 90 mph, and their minds in the clouds it seems.  If you have something to say to someone why not just call them.  I have learned how to E-mail but I do it as a last resort.  I still had rather make a phone call.  Maybe it's just what you're use to.  I've been around telephones all my life.  I grew up in the city of Atlanta and still remember my childhood phone number, DR-8214.  As the population grew, the phone company installed a 7 in the number making it DR-7-8214.  The DR stood for DRAKE but I have no idea what DRAKE  meant and I assume no one at the telephone company did either so they just decided to use numbers instead so our new number was 377-8214.  Most of our family lived in the Mableton area and their phone numbers consisted of only 4 numbers, like 6132.  I still wonder today how you would call one of my aunts when we had 7 numbers and they had only 4.  We also had what were called party lines back then which meant we shared a phone line with someone else. I don't know who these people were but I still remember they would stay on the phone for what seemed like hours at a time.  If I needed to call one of my friends I would just keep picking up the phone and listening to their conversation until they would finally hang up.  Back then advances in technology didn't bother me as much.  In fact I even liked some of it.  Like when we got a private phone line. Or when we upgraded to a push button phone from a rotary phone.  I remember on our honeymoon Peggy and me  sitting in a large phone booth in Disneyland and talking to my mother-in-law on a speaker phone.  It was of course hands free and we could both talk at the same time.  We thought that was so cool.  And how about the TV.  We had 3 channels.  Yep three,  that's it. And it was in all black and white and the screen must have been 11 or 12 inches but the cabinet  was the size of a refrigerator.  And I could write about  the advancements in cars for weeks on end and not only cars but also on the roads.  I remember when they opened the downtown connector (I 75 and I 85).  I was to young to drive but I thought that was the coolest thing ever.  In fact in some places there were 3 lanes on each side of the road.  And the advances in the kitchen....WOW...the microwave and digital refrigerators with outside water and Ice and dishwashers and trash compactors and on and on.

Oh yes...we've made advancements, and we love to think about how it was in the
"good ol days".  Or were they the good ol days or are these the good ol days?  That's a good question for another post in days to come but for now let me get back to the eulogy of Steve Jobs.  There was one line in it that really stuck in my mind.  There were many others that touched me in a special way.  Many others that made me tear up.  Many about his relationships with his family and about his character and such but for some reason this line stood out...Maybe it was because it wasn't only about him but about us all..His sister wrote......
"We all — in the end — die in medias res. In the middle of a story. Of many stories."
That is why some of us fear death.  We want to read the whole story.  We want to know how it turns out.  How our children grow and how our grand children advance in life and what they become and we think maybe we could make them happier and more successful.  I use to tell Peggy, and I still believe it's true today,  that within the first five years of our children's lives, we have more  influence on  them than we ever will.  If they don't know by the age of 4 or 5, what is right and wrong, how to respect others, that they are loved and how to love, then in most cases they never will.

This story on earth began a long time before you and I and it will continue after we've  gone on.  We will die and go to be with our God and life as we know it now will continue without us.  These will be the good ol days for our children and grand children, and all we can do is hope and pray,  that we helped make them the good ol days .

In this,  the month of Thanksgiving.  I give thanks to my God for giving me the opportunity to help write this part of the story....Amen and amen.