It doesn’t matter how many times I read, listen to, or watch a biography of Abraham Lincoln I am always surprised and newly saddened that he’s shot and dies. I have no idea why. I simply, for some reason, expect the biography to end differently, for the president to not be shot, or if he’s shot not to die. Yet every time he is shot and of course he dies, I feel again the absoluteness: he is gone... forever.

I stood at the open grave and buried my father; then 25 years later, at the open grave of my mother. Most recently I stood at the open single grave of my husband’s mother and father to which the cremated remains of both were committed. I felt the absoluteness again: they are gone... forever.

There is nothing good about the day Jesus was executed.

A mother sees her child suffer a tort…