Toward Religion

The girl who was first to die from our high school class now has been dead twice as long as she was alive. She was not the type we'd think would hang around with a drunk guy, much less get in a car with one. None of us who were her friends will forget her. But soon we shall be dead. What was the point of her life? No memory lasts. Memorials' promises cheat. Someday shepherds will stand with flocks around the black stump of the Washington Monument and wonder why that's there, what god reared it and broke it. As well ask what's the point of our lives as hers. At least we got to live them, comes the answer. And it turns the original question back up and no second answer comes. That's as far as I get.