The sunset of life

My Great-Grandma Charlene died last week. Driving up to Nampa, it just seemed strange, like it hadn't really happened, like we were just going on a road trip to Idaho.  We knew it was coming, she had been fading, and when she had a stroke, we knew it wouldn't be long.  A strange thing happens when someone passes away, at least someone who has led a long life, it's somehow peaceful, like watching the sun disappear beyond the horizon.  You can't stop it, you can't choose when it will happen. It just does.  And when the sun crosses that line past the horizon, leaving only darkness, you are left with a kind of empty feeling, yet a hopeful one.  A feeling that you know you will see the sunlight again, and that the light is warming another world that needs it too.  93 years, she has seen so much.  I remember all the stories that my grandpa has told me, about her playing music for the German Soldiers that came to work on the farm, about the magpie they trained to talk, how she worked just as hard on the farm as Great-grandpa Ross, that she loved flowers(but not white ones), birds, and all animals, and when she defended me and yelled at my grandpa when she found out he had conned me into eating "rocky-mountain-oysters".  I was nervous about going to the viewing, it had been a long time since I had gone to a funeral. But she looked peaceful, and the entire time we were there, it was more a celebration of her life, than a mourning of it.  I am grateful for the gospel. I am grateful to know that there are happy endings.  "...And men are that they might have joy".  We love you Grandma Charlene.