IT MAKES YOU THINK

In 3 days time, on Saturday 28th July, I will be exactly the same age my dad was when he died. He was 64 and 2 weeks.
It was no age, we all agreed. He'd been in robust good health despite more than half a lifetime as a smoker of cigarettes and then cigars. About what would be 5 months ago, out in southern Spain in his divorced, retirement heaven, he thought he'd had a stroke. He flew back here and my elder brother and I accompanied him to a meeting with a neurologist who pointed out that as it had come on slowly, it wasn't a stroke. Turned out it was a brain tumour, which they removed surgically, but that was only a secondary to a terminal growth in his lungs.
All 4 of his children were at his bedside as he breathed his last, in the small hours of that quiet night. At least he'd had 3 years of happy retirement. But 64 was not enough. He was very brave  and even turned his back on a lifetime of atheism 10 days before, committing to Christ in quite miraculous circumstances.
He's buried in a still corner of an English graveyard, near Bedford. I have visited it. But not for a long time. And now I've equalled him. Very nearly.
Though we are driving down to Somerset on Saturday!